REFLECTIONS  OF 
A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 


BY 
EDWARD  SANDFORD  MARTIN 

AUTHOR  OF 

"THE  LUXURY  OF  CHILDREN" 
"  LUCID  INTERVALS,"  ETC. 


HARP]  R   &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW   YORK   AND    LONDON 

MCMXIII 


COPYRIGHT.    1913.    BY   HARPER   ft    BROTHERS 
PRINTED   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES   OF   AMERICA 


PUBLISHED  APRIL.    1913 


D-N 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 1 

II.  SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 27 

III.  COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 52 

IV.  THE  BABY 73 

V.  A  CONTRIBUTION  FROM  MAJOR  BRACE 94 

VI.  POLITICS 116 

VII.  WE  DINE  OUT  AND  Discuss  EDUCATION    ....  125 

VIII.  MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE  .  146 


262620 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING 
HUSBAND 


'»,'  />\  ?,,  i  :'  V  : 


REFLECTIONS   OF 
A   BEGINNING   HUSBAND 


BY  THE   SECOND  INTENTION 

"TpvEAR  Mr.  French,"  my  letter  began, 
1  J  "Cordelia  and  I  have  a  mind  again  to 
get  married.  But  having  once  been  engaged 
and  quit,  we  have  no  mind  at  all  to  be  engaged 
again  and  divulge  it.  Would  you  mind,  please, 
you  and  Mrs.  French,  if  we  eloped?  It  seems 
so  much  the  more  feasible  and  private  way." 

I  would  rather  have  broken  it  to  him  by  word 
of  mouth,  but  for  some  things  it  is  written  words 
or  none.  If  you  have  determined  to  elope  with 
a  man's  daughter  you  can't  very  well  go  and 
ask  leave  of  him.  Suppose  he  objects!  Of 
course  he  will  object,  especially  after  consulting 
his  wife.  The  only  way,  if  you  propose  to  con- 

i 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

suit  him  at  all,  is  to  write,  and  mail  the  letter 
on  the  way  to  the  church  and  come  back  to  the 
house  afterward  for  the  answer. 

Cordelia  felt  she  just  couldn't  be  publicly 
engaged  to  me  again.  Of  course  I  didn't  mind. 
I  think  meanly  of  the  engaged  state  per  se,  but 
I  had  always  rather  be  engaged  to  Cordelia  than 
not.  But  that  was  only  because  I  had  always 
wanted  to  marry  her,  and  had  been  glad  to 
throw  any  convenient  obstacle,  even  an  engage- 
ment, in  the  way  of  her  marrying  any  one  else. 
The  thing  that  had  bothered  me  was  to  have  the 
engagement  end  without  our  being  married.  I 
wanted  to  have  it  die  a  natural  death  in  church, 
with  flowers  and  a  minister,  and  it  had  irked  me 
very  sore  indeed  to  be  "released "  like  a  baseball- 
player  before  the  end  of  the  season.  It  left  me 
on  a  miserably  awkward  footing  with  the  rest 
of  the  world  and  with  her,  and  it  left  her  in  the 
same  case.  Nobody  quite  knew  whether  to  con- 
gratulate either  of  us  on  getting  rid  of  the  other. 
People  naturally  wanted  to  know  why,  and  of 
course  you  can't  tell  in  the  newspaper.  It  was 
awkward  for  our  families.  There  was  a  feeling 
that  they  ought  to  quarrel,  because  somebody 
must  be  to  blame,  and  the  other  side  ought  to 

2 


BY  THE   SECOND  INTENTION 

resent  it.  But  they  didn't  want  to  quarrel,  and 
wouldn't;  not  even  a  little,  to  keep  up  appear- 
ances. They  held  their  tongues  and  went  on 
about  their  business  as  before,  but  inevitably 
flocked  more  apart  than  they  had  been  wont  to 
do,  because  when  they  met  it  excited  too  much 
interest. 

I  don't  mean  that  they  were  such  conspicuous 
people  that  the  London  papers  had  cables  about 
them.  It  was  only  that  when  Mrs.  Fessenden 
or  Mrs.  Somebody  Else  got  home  from  the 
Jenkinses'  tea  she  told  her  family,  and  whom- 
ever she  had  to  dinner,  that  Mrs.  French  and 
Harriet  and  Mrs.  Jesup  were  at  the  Jenkinses' 
and  spoke,  as  they  passed,  as  politely  as  though 
nothing  had  happened.  And  then  would  follow 
a  little  chattering  tribute  of  discourse  about 
Cordelia  French  and  Peregrine  Jesup,  and  why 
did  they  break  their  engagement,  anyway! 

Not  that  my  family,  or  Cordelia's,  got  direct 
reports  of  what  was  said  at  Mrs.  Fessenden's 
dinner-table.  They  didn't;  at  least,  not  often. 
But  they  knew  what  must  have  been  said,  and 
families  don't  like  to  be  subjects  of  speculation 
or  of  critical  or  even  compassionate  observa- 
tion. They  can  bear  the  eye  of  approval,  of 

3 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

admiration,  and  even  of  a  moderate  envy,  but 
what  family  likes  to  have  the  Fessendens,  the 
Jenkinses,  the  Underharrows,  the  Overtons,  and 
the  rest  of  the  families  getting  their  heads 
together  to  swap  surmises  as  to  what  the 
Frenches  and  the  Jesups  have  got  in  their 
closet! 

Maybe  you'd  like  to  know  why  Cordelia  and 
I  loosed  hands  after  our  intentions  had  been 
six  months  on  file.  In  this  private  way  why 
should  I  not  explain  that  it  was  not  so  much 
the  fault  of  either  of  us  as  of  the  conditions 
of  life  as  we  found  them.  You  see,  I  was 
twenty-three,  and  Cordelia  was  two  years 
younger.  I  was  studying  the  profession  in 
which  I  hope  to  be  useful  in  my  day  and  genera- 
tion, and  by  the  practice  of  which  I  hope  to 
derive  a  respectable  maintenance  from  a  con- 
tributory world,  which  Cordelia  was  already 
inspecting.  That's  what  she  was  doing.  She 
was  out  of  school  and  looking  about,  shifting 
from  continent  to  continent  to  get  a  better 
view;  getting  acquainted  with  people  and 
things,  ascertaining  whom  and  what  she  liked 
and  what  places  seemed  more  joyous  to  her 
than  others.  What  for  so  much  inspection 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

and  investigation  to  prepare  her  for  a  destiny 
already  measured  off,  tied  up,  and  waiting  to  be 
called  for?  If  she  had  been  in  college,  she  might 
possibly  have  kept.  I  don't  know  what  are  the 
merits  of  the  women's  colleges  as  depositories 
for  engaged  girls,  but  they  may  have  a  value 
for  that  use.  But  a  roving  life  of  enlargement 
by  travel  and  social  experience  has  no  such 
value  at  all.  There  was  I,  tied  up  to  profes- 
sional studies,  on  such  allowances  as  my  in- 
dulgent parents  could  afford  me  without  too 
gross  injustice  to  their  own  family  Me  and  their 
obligations  to  their  other  dependents.  And 
there  was  Cordelia,  diligently  qualifying  herself 
to  live  creditably  and  profitably  on  an  income 
of  from  twelve  thousand  a  year  up. 

You  might  suppose  that  ordinary  precautions 
would  have  been  taken  to  prevent  her  from  see- 
ing much  of  a  person  so  unsuited  to  her  needs  as 
I,  but  they  were  not.  There  was  nothing 
against  me:  I  had  no  criminal  record,  did  not 
drink  much,  was  of  respectable  origin,  had 
known  Cordelia  a  long  time  already,  and  was 
such  a  person,  in  a  general  way,  as  she  might 
properly  enough  marry  sometime,  if  circum- 
stances suited.  Cordelia  came  out,  and  went 

5 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

to  dances  and  dinners.  She  had  to  dance  with 
somebody.  Male  persons  of  the  dancing  age 
and  disposition  with  incomes  of  from  twelve 
thousand  up  are  rather  scarce.  Dances  cannot 
be  equipped  with  such  alone:  neither  can  din- 
ners. So  Cordelia  danced  with  anybody  who 
asked  her  soon  enough,  and  that  was  often  me; 
and  she  ate  her  dinner  alongside  of  whoever 
was  put  next  to  her,  and  that  was  sometimes 
me.  And  when  it  wasn't  me  I  wished  it  was; 
and  so  what  happened,  happened  all  in  natural 
course  and  according  to  reasonable  expectation, 
and  nobody  ventured  to  disprove,  though  doubt- 
less there  was  a  fair  volume  of  conjecture  as  to 
whose  money  Cordelia  French  and  Peregrine 
Jesup  proposed  to  get  married  on.  But  we 
had  not  selected  anybody  to  underwrite  our 
prospective  happiness.  We  had  not  got  so  far 
as  that.  We  had  just  got  irresponsibly  engaged, 
according  to  the  American  plan  and  the 
spontaneous  promptings  of  youth  and  affection. 
What  about  our  current  American  practice 
of  turning  most  of  the  girls  loose  from  school 
at  eighteen  or  nineteen  and  keeping  most  of 
the  youths,  who  are  their  natural  mates,  tied 
up  to  professional  studies  or  business  appren- 

6 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

ticeships  four  or  five  years  longer,  and  letting 
them  play  together  meanwhile,  and  expecting 
them  to  shape  their  own  destinies  on  practical 
and  satisfactory  lines?  Isn't  a  good  deal  ex- 
pected of  us  young  people,  all  tinder,  sparks,  and 
indiscretion?  The  French,  they  tell  me,  expect 
less  and  provide  more.  I  have  thought  a  good 
deal  of  these  concerns  since  Cordelia  and  I  were 
first  engaged  and  found  our  intentions  un- 
seasonable. Of  course,  I  wanted  to  be  consid- 
ered in  Cordelia's  plans  and  deportment; 
wanted,  naturally,  to  have  her  stay  around 
where  I  could  see  her  at  recess  and  on  Sundays 
and  other  holidays,  and  perhaps  meet  her  at 
festive  gatherings  when  the  urgency  of  my 
studies  permitted  me  to  get  to  them.  I  liked 
to  have  her  around  handy,  but  of  course  I 
could  not  interdict  her  from  going  about,  or  even 
from  going  beyond  the  seas  when  it  suited  her 
parents  to  take  her.  - 1  could  say  that  she  had 
already  seen  as  much  of  the  world  and  the 
people  in  it  as  was  necessary,  but  how  was  I  to 
insist  that,  while  I  was  cultivating  and  improv- 
ing my  abilities  all  I  knew  how,  Cordelia  should 
let  most  of  hers  lie  fallow  and  mark  time  and 
wait?  If  she  had  only  had  a  steady  job  to  work 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

at  in  the  intermission  while  I  was  qualifying 
myself  to  work  at  mine,  things  might  have 
worked  out  serenely;  but  the  only  job  she  had 
was  to  get  married,  and  meanwhile  to  cheer 
and  satisfy  her  parents,  and  try  to  be  worth 
her  keep  to  them  while  she  was  making  ac- 
quaintance with  the  world.  Marriage  seems 
to  be  a  complete  occupation  (circumstances  be- 
ing favorable),  but  being  engaged  isn't.  It's 
just  a  makeshift,  delightful  for  six  weeks,  very 
suitable  for  three  months,  and  tolerable  for  six; 
but  when  it  contemplates  indefinite  extension 
into  uncertain  years  it  is  an  asset  of  very 
doubtful  value  to  a  girl  in  active  social  life. 
When  the  Frenches  found  that  Cordelia  seemed 
to  be  losing  interest  in  affairs,  was  indifferent 
to  dances  and  dinners,  was  apt  to  be  abandoned 
by  mankind  to  the  society  of  chaperones,  was 
getting  left  out  of  house-parties  that  I  could 
not  go  to,  was  gently  indisposed  to  put  the  sea 
or  any  wide  expanse  of  land  between  herself  and 
me,  and  was  rather  aggravated  than  appeased 
by  the  little  she  could  see  of  me  when  I  was 
near,  they  said— the  parents  did:  "This  isn't 
working  to  much  of  a  charm !  Nobody  is  ahead 
on  it,  and  we  are  getting  behind.  Cordelia's 

8 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

no  fun  any  more,  and  there  is  no  end  of  it  in 
sight." 

And  soon  after  Cordelia  and  I  called  our 
engagement  off,  much  to  our  grief  and  with  the 
sympathy  of  our  elders.  I  advised  her  to  put 
me  down  to  the  account  of  experience,  and  try 
to  figure  out  a  profit  on  me,  if  she  could.  But 
I  never  put  her  down  to  account  of  anything, 
being  of  just  the  same  mind  about  her  that  I 
always  had  been,  though  grievously  put  out  to 
leave  her  blooming  on  the  paternal  bush  with- 
out any  "hands-off  "  sign  on  her,  protected  only 
by  her  natural  thorns. 

There  was  a  line  in  the  paper  to  say  the  en- 
gagement was  off,  Cordelia  went  abroad  again, 
I  continued  my  studies,  and  time  went  on.  It 
does  go  on  somehow;  the  trick  is  to  keep  on 
going  with  it.  Who  does  that,  gets  somewhere 
in  spite  of  impediments,  lacerations  of  the 
affections,  and  all  misgivings  about  the  possi- 
bility of  there  being  a  gap  anywhere  in  the  pro- 
cession of  self-supporters  that  a  new  aspirant 
can  fit  himself  into.  I  have  been  called  "sensi- 
ble." It  seems  a  painfully  tame  thing  to  be, 
and  I  presume  I  was  called  so  by  way  of  dis- 
paragement. But,  after  all,  there  are  times 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

when  there  is  no  choice  but  between  being 
sensible  and  being  silly,  and  then  you  have  just 
got  to  be  sensible  if  you  can,  no  matter  how  it 
tastes.  Being  sensible,  while  one  is  working 
to  get  a  start  in  life,  must  be  excused,  because 
it  is  the  price  of  adventure,  indiscretion,  specu- 
lation— all  the  really  glorious  and  spectacular 
parts  of  human  existence. 

Three  years  I  was  sensible  and  plugged  away 
at  my  job,  learning  the  rudiments  and  then  the 
application  of  them.  All  that  time  I  had  never 
a  word  with  Cordelia.  How  could  I?  I  could 
not  go  on  where  I  left  off,  and  unless,  or  until, 
I  could  do  that,  how  could  I  go  on  at  all?  Sight 
of  her  I  did  have  now  and  then,  but  seldom; 
for,  though  she  was  often  in  town  and  I  nearly 
always  there,  our  occupations  usually  kept  us 
from  accidental  meetings.  We  didn't  travel 
the  same  beats. 

I  finished  my  professional  studies,  sustained 
the  tests  provided  to  measure  my  proficiency, 
and  got  a  job  in  an  office  with  a  small  salary 
and  some  prospects.  Candor  requires  that  I 
admit  that  I  passed  those  examinations  pretty 
well,  for  really  I  had  not  spared  work  in  the  long- 
preparation  for  them. 

10 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

And  the  job  I  got  was  a  good  one  as  beginners' 
jobs  go,  and  the  prospects  were  as  good,  so  far 
as  I  could  see,  as  the  prospects  of  anybody  of 
my  time  of  life  and  in  my  line  of  endeavor.  So 
I  didn't  see  why,  barring  accidents,  I  should 
not  get  somewhere  presently. 

So  the  months  sped.  Coming  early  up-town 
on  a  late  October  day,  I  got  into  a  pay-as-you- 
enter  car  at  Forty-second  Street,  and  there  was 
Cordelia,  alone  and  with  a  seat  vacant  beside 
her,  which  I  took. 

"This  is  a  fine  day,"  said  I,  "and  you  be- 
come it  very  much,  and  I  hope  you  have  good 
health?" 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Cordelia. 

"And  good  spirits?"  said  I. 

"Oh  yes;"  but  she  said  it  more  doubtfully 
and  with  no  more  than  a  languid  affirmation. 

"And  I  hope  that  sport  is  good,"  said  I;  and 
she  assented  to  that,  but  in  a  way  that  sug- 
gested that  it  might  be  more  boisterously  satis- 
factory. And  with  that  we  fell  into  discourse, 
trifling  but  easy,  and  that  progressed  in  its  tone 
from  easy  to  friendly,  and  from  friendly  to 
old  -  friendly .  And  I  let  the  car  pass  Fifty- 
fourth  Street  and  pretended  to  myself  I  was 

11 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

going  to  Fifty -ninth,  and  let  it  pass  Fifty- 
ninth  and  pretended  nothing  further  to  myself. 
It  wasn't  until  some  days  later  that  I  learned 
that  her  intended  destination  was  Fifty-seventh 
Street.  As  it  was,  while  rolling  through  the 
Sixties  we  each  cautiously  discovered  that  we 
were  bound  for  the  Museum  at  Eighty-second 
Street,  and  there  we  got  off;  and  since  it  was, 
as  I  pointed  out  to  her,  too  lovely  an  autumn 
day  to  go  indoors,  we  went  and  sat  down  in  the 
Park  instead,  and  there,  a  little  off  the  track 
of  passers-by,  fell  into  discussion  of  the  condi- 
tions of  contemporary  existence. 

"Cordelia,"  said  I,  "are  you  having  any  fun?" 

She  meditated  a  moment.     Three  years  is  a 

long  time  in  the  early  twenties,  and  Cordelia 

had  grown  perceptibly  thoughtfuler  since  she 

and  I  left  off. 

"Fun?  Oh  yes,  I  have  some.  It  has  been 
a  pleasant  summer.  We  went  abroad  in  the 
spring,  and  it  was  nice  in  the  country  after  we 
got  home.  People  were  sometimes  interesting; 
some  of  the  books  were  good  to  read;  I  liked 
the  flowers  in  the  garden,  and  I  liked  to  ride  a 
horse,  and  sometimes  motoring  was  pleasant, 
and  the  swimming  and  the  sailing." 

12 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

I  confess  that  my  heart  settled  back  a  bit  at 
this  list  of  profitable  occupations.  "Are  you 
marrying  any  one  this  fall,  Cordelia?"  said  I. 
"Have  you  an  interesting  line  of  suitors  now? 
Or  can  it  be  that  being  well  off  you  have  the 
unusual  discretion  to  realize  it?" 

"Oh,  I  realize  it;  yes,  a  good  deal.  But  I 
am  only  temporarily  well  off." 

"What's  the  matter?  Father's  stocks  look 
shaky  to  you?" 

"Oh  no.     Father  doesn't  seem  anxious." 

"Suitors,  maybe.  Perhaps  you  feel  yourself 
near  capitulation?" 

"Possibly!    But  I  have  not  diagnosed  it  so." 

"Down  there  where  you  spend  your  sum- 
mers there  are  stock-brokers  growing  on  every 
bush,  and  the  stock-brokers,  you  know,  Cor- 
delia, are  the  only  young  men — except  the 
hereditary  rich — who  have  money  enough  to 
get  married  on." 

"Why  didn't  you  turn  to  that  yourself, 
Peregrine?" 

"I?  Bless  you!  I  never  had  a  chance. 
Nobody  ever  seemed  to  see  the  making  of  a 
stock-broker  in  me.  And  besides — well,  I  con- 
fess I  have  never  felt  drawn  to  that  vocation. 

13 


KEFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

I  would  like  uncommonly  well  to  earn  plenty 
of  money,  and  I  mean  to,  sometime;  but  I'd 
rather  have  the  pay  seem  more  like  an  incident 
of  my  job  than  have  my  job  an  incident  of 

my  pay-" 

"I'm  afraid  you  are  not  a  really  earnest 
money-maker,  Peregrine?" 

"Just  wait  till  I  get  a  chance  to  throw  in  my 
clutch;  then  you'll  see!  And  I'll  soon  begin 
to  get  it  now!  But  if  you  think  well  of  the 
stock-broker  calling,  Cordelia,  there  was  Archi- 
bald Tassel.  I  heard  of  him  as  having  the  dis- 
cernment to  be  your  warm  admirer;  and  a 
wholesome,  hearty  young  man  too,  and  well 
found.  And  yet  you  seem  never  to  have  smiled 
on  him?" 

"So?" 

"It  must  be  you  don't  care  for  a  sporting 
life.  Well,  I  am  only  moderately  drawn  to  it 
myself.  You  have  to  work  so  hard  and  pay 
so  high  for  what  you  get,  and  it's  so  hard  on  the 
tissues,  and  you  get  so  little  in  the  end.  But 
there  was  that  cheerful  young  Van  Terminal, 
Cordelia;  pockets  bulging  with  ancestral  coin; 
nice  manners,  immense  energy,  large  appetite  for 
pleasure,  four  or  five  automobiles  in  his  garage, 

14 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

and  a  private  tank  of  gasolene  with  a  pipe-line 
connection  with  Hunters  Point.  If  there  is  an 
eligible  young  man  about,  it  is  Corlear  Van 
Terminal,  and  yet,  Cordelia — " 

"Mercy,  Peregrine,  would  you  have  me 
marry  him?" 

"Oh  no!  By  no  means.  No!  No!  I  never 
was  the  least  keen  to  have  you.  But  why  didn't 
you?" 

"Why  should  I?" 

"Everything  money  can  buy,  and  not  such 
a  bad  encumbrance.  Amiable  young  man 
enough,  and  you  with  your  great  qualifications 
for  companionship  and  direction  might  have 
kept  him  out  of  serious  mischief  all  his  days. 
I  don't  say  you  could  have  done  it,  but  it  was 
conceivably  possible." 

"He's  very  nice  and  so  jocund.  Mother  and 
I  were  much  pleased  with  him — are  still.  I 
don't  know  what  efforts  I  should  have  made  if 
it  hadn't  been  for  father." 

"What  did  he  say?" 

"I  hardly  like  to  tell  you!" 

"Oh  yes,  do!" 

"He  said:  'Good  God!  Cordelia.  Not  that 
one!  Wait,  and  perhaps  you  may  catch  a  man! 

15 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

Leave  those  joyous  natures  to  marry  chorus 
girls/  he  said,  and  told  me  I  was  built  for  some- 
thing better  than  to  be  the  ballast  for  a  joy- 
rider's motor-car.  That's  just  like  father. 
He's  not  very  practical.  But  it  flattered  me, 
and  I  didn't  try  after  that." 

"Poor  girl!  What  a  father!  What  a  tre- 
mendous handicap  parents  are,  anyway!" 

"You  needn't  complain  of  father.  That  was 
the  only  time  he  meddled.  He  has  done  his 
best  for  me.  He  knows  admirable  young  men! 
'Father's  friends,'  I  call  them.  Somehow  they 
never  make  up  to  me.  But  I'm  improving; 
I  know  I  am.  I  think  so  much  my  hair  is  com- 
ing out,  and  the  day  may  come  when  I  shall 
find  grace  in  the  eyes  of  one  of  'father's  friends.' ' 

"Oh  no!  Cordelia,  don't!  I  have  a  better 
plan  for  you.  I  know  such  a  good  young  man, 
who  has  needed  you  with  gnawing  destitution, 
night  and  day  going  on  four  years." 

"How  interesting!  The  poor  young  man! 
Destitute  of  me  and  I  suppose  of  all  the  other 
goods  of  this  world,  and  mortgaged  besides  for 
the  support  of  his  aged  grandmother!  I  beg 
you,  Peregrine,  not  to  attempt  to  entangle  me 
with  impossible  good  young  men.  Life  is  too 

16 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

fleeting.  The  American  spring  is  too  short. 
All  in  a  minute  is  it  summer,  and  to-morrow 
comes  Fourth  of  July  and  haytime,  and  we  are 
cut  down  and  cast  into  the  oven." 

"Well,  dear  Cordelia,  take  a  broker — take 
a  broker!  Or  some  nice  old  gentleman;  or  a 
widower  or  something,  with  ready-made  shekels 
strung  on  him!" 

"Don't  be  unkind  to  me,  Peregrine!" 
"Oh,  well — I  was  telling  you — where  was  I? 
You  put  me  all  out  when  you  speak  like  that. 
Oh  yes — the  good  young  destitute  man !  Well, 
the  good  young  man  has  no  grandmother  to 
support — only  himself  as  yet,  and  can  do  that, 
by  George!  And  it's  time;  he's  rising  twenty- 
seven.  And  his  prospects  are  not  bad  now. 
And  if  he  could  manage  to  get  married  they'd 
be  better;  they'd  have  to  be.  You  see,  we 
have  to  get  one  thing  at  a  time,  and  I've  known 
awful  cases — even  I  in  my  short  experience 
have  observed  them — of  men  who  waited  until 
they  had  got  a  good  living  before  they  got 
married,  and  found,  when  they  got  ready  to 
get  a  wife,  that  their  minds  had  been  on  other 
things  so  long  that  they  had  clean  forgotten 
how.  That's  awful,  isn't  it?  It  happens  all 

17 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

the  time.  I  see  it  at  the  clubs.  I  don't  want 
it  to  happen  to — to  the  good  young  semi- 
destitute  man  I  had  in  mind." 

"Oh  no,  Peregrine;  surely  not.  It's  an  aw- 
ful thought;  awful!  But  yet,  suppose  he  got 
the  girl,  what — " 

"What  costs  so  dreadfully  much,  Cordelia? 
I  know  of  quite  a  decent  flat  for  fifty  dollars 
a  month;  a  nice  flat  over  a  tailor  shop,  and  not 
in  Harlem  either — not  twenty  blocks  from  where 
we're  sitting.  And  for  three  dollars  a  day  you 
can  get  food  enough  for  two  or  three  persons 
— eggs  not  superlatively  fresh,  perhaps,  but 
eggs — and  for  a  dollar  a  day  you  can  hire  a 
very  good  servant,  and  that's  only  a  little  more 
than  forty  dollars  a  week;  and  a  good  young 
man  of  twenty-seven,  with  four  or  five  years  of 
hard  work  behind  him,  who  can't  see  his  way 
to  lay  his  hands  on  at  least  sixty  dollars  a  week 
isn't  good  enough  for  you.  But  sixty  would 
about  do  it,  Cordelia.  Sixty  plunks  is  a  great 
deal  of  money — a  whole  lot  of  money  to  earn — 
but  not  an  unattainable  wage;  not  one  that  a 
diligent  and  competent  trained  hand  need  con- 
sider the  limit  of  his  aspirations — no,  not  in  a 
city  like  this  with  a  traction  company  to  be 

18 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

supported,  and  eighty  million  people  in  the 
back  country  to  help  pay  five  millions  of  us 
for  living  here." 

"You  are  a  more  calculating  person  than  you 
used  to  be,  Peregrine.  When  did  you  work  all 
that  out?  And  suppose  it  were  possible  to  live 
on  sixty  dollars  a  week,  what  makes  you  think 
it  would  pay  to  do  it,  and  why  do  most  people 
of  our  habits  think  they  need  so  very  much 
more?" 

"The  trouble  with  them  is  they  haven't  been 
emancipated.  The  things  that  cost  are  amuse- 
ment and  social  aspirations.  If  you  can  cut 
those  out  for  a  time,  living  is  not  so  impossibly 
dear.  But  stupid  people  can't  do  it,  and  un- 
emancipated  people  don't  dare  to." 

"Unemancipated?  Unemancipated !  Unem- 
ancipated  from  what,  Peregrine?" 

"From  things,  Cordelia,  and  the  habit  of 
needing  them  in  superfluous  quantity;  from 
the  standards  of  living  set  by  people  who  are 
poor  on  fifty  thousand  a  year;  from  the  idea 
of  life  that  is  based  on  what  you  have  got;  from 
automobiles,  and  expensive  sports,  and  boxes 
at  the  opera;  from  the  notion  that  it  is  essential 
to  keep  in  the  swim,  and  know  only  the  right 

19 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

people;  from  pleasures  and  from  people  that 
waste  time  and  money  and  give  nothing  back 
that  is  worth  having." 

"My!  Peregrine!  When  did  you  turn  an- 
archist?" 

"Not  long  after  our  engagement  was  broken. 
I  loved  you,  Cordelia,  that's  the  truth,  and  I 
hated  everything  that  broke  it.  I  learned  to 
see  that  there  was  no  obstacle  between  you  and 
me  that  a  little  time  and  hard  work  could  not 
easily  overcome,  and  that  the  obstacles  that 
looked  biggest  and  blackest  had  no  real  sub- 
stance to  them,  and  could  be  brushed  aside 
whenever  we  were  ready  and  had  the  grit  to 
do  it.  Don't  cry,  Cordelia!  If  you  let  me 
hold  your  hand  again,  I  don't  think  any  one 
would  notice." 

"I  was — I  wasn't  crying,  Peregrine.  I — I 
was — only  thinking!" 

"Don't  cry!  Because  this  is  such  a  delight- 
ful world  for  folks  who  are  free  and  can  work, 
and  have  the  courage  to  shape  their  own  courses. 
It  looks  all  lovely  colors  to  me,  with  you  here — 
so  much  to  get  and  such  an  interesting  stunt 
to  get  to  it;  so  much  to  do,  and  such  inspirations 
for  the  doing  of  it;  such  excellent  loads  to  lift 

20 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

at  and  maybe  shoulder.  Think,  Cordelia, 
think  by  all  means!  That  is  the  most  fun 
there  is,  and  the  most  we  shall  either  of  us  get 
for  some  time  to  come  if  you  marry  me  on 
sixty  dollars  a  week.  Oh  dear!  There  were 
times  when  I  feared  you  weren't  going  to  wait! 
Those  were  the  worst  pinches  of  the  pull.  To 
get  tired  and  have  no  heart  of  refuge  to  fly  to — 
you  know  that  is  pretty  trying,  Cordelia." 

"I  know,  Peregrine.  And  to  wait  with 
folded  hands  and  not  know — it  tries  the  faith. 
A  bunch  of  roses  on  my  birthday,  a  bunch  of 
roses  on  Christmas  morning,  not  a  line  with 
either  of  them!  Oh,  Peregrine!" 

"There!  Nobody  saw  us  but  the  squirrel! 
Tar  out  of  sight,  while  sorrows  still  enfold  us, 
lies  the  fair  country  where  our  hearts  abide.' 
Do  you  know  that  hymn,  Cordelia?  There 
were  days  together  when  it  ran  in  my  head. 
It  meant  heaven  to  whoever  wrote  it,  but  to 
me  it  meant  a  fifty-dollar-a-month  flat  and 
you." 

"Don't  cry,  Peregrine!" 

"I  wasn't  crying.  But  you  must  allow  a 
man  some  sentiment.  Are  you  game  for  the 
flat  and  sixty  dollars  a  week?" 

21 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

"Let  us  look  at  the  flat.  I  hope  all  the 
rooms  are  not  cupboards.  Do  you  know  that 
my  aunt  just  passed  on  the  drive  in  a  victoria? 
Gracious !  I  have  just  time  to  get  home  before 
dark  and  dinner." 

That  was  the  substance  of  the  discourse  we 
had  that  autumn  day.  I  never  mailed  that 
letter  I  wrote  to  Cordelia's  father.  We  con- 
cluded that  it  would  not  be  polite  to  our  parents 
to  elope,  and,  since  we  both  had  very  indulgent 
parents,  what  was  the  use!  So  I  broke  it  to 
the  old  man,  and  he  was  quite  reasonable  and 
let  me  stay  to -dinner,  and  we  had  champagne. 
And  Cordelia's  mother  was  kind,  too,  and  though 
she  declared  that  I  was  as  bad  a  match  as  any 
worldly-wise  woman  could  ask  for,  she  felt. that 
Cordelia  had  come  as  nearly  to  years  of  marital 
discretion  as  women  who  get  married  ever 
come,  and  that  it  was  certainly  time  she  knew 
whether  I  was  the  ineligible  man  she  wanted 
or  not. 

So  I  told  my  own  parents,  too,  and  my  father 
smiled  and  said  more  marriages  hereabouts 
seemed  to  be  spoiled  nowadays  by  too  much 
money  than  by  too  little;  and  my  mother  shed 
some  tears,  but  they  were  not  tears  of  discon- 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

tent.  She  has  begun  to  be  interested  in  my 
trousseau,  and  keeps  suggesting  things  that  I 
had  better  buy  and  have  charged  to  Father, 
and  I  hear  of  her  being  seen  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  auction  shops  where  they  sell  furniture, 
and  she  has  counseled  me  by  no  means  to 
trench  upon  Great-aunt  Susan's  legacy,  which 
constitutes  the  total  sum  of  my  private  for- 
tune. It  is  not  a  large  legacy,  and  how  I  shall 
ever  add  anything  to  it,  except  Cordelia,  I 
cannot  imagine;  but  I  am  going  to  somehow, 
and  meanwhile  Cordelia  will  be  an  immense 
asset  and  make  me  a  rich  man  at  the  start. 

Perhaps  Aunt  Susan's  legacy  will  start  on 
its  career  as  the  total  fortune  of  a  married  man 
by  a  period  of  depletion;  for  the  truth  is  I  am 
not  taking  in  the  whole  of  sixty  dollars  a  week 
at  the  present  juncture.  It  is  no  great  income 
to  command  at  twenty-seven  if  one  has  begun 
his  money-getting  at  seventeen,  but  it  is  a  great 
deal  for  any  one  of  that  age  who  has  spent 
three  or  four  years  in  general  enlargement  of 
the  ideas  and  experiences  in  a  college  and  three 
or  four  more  in  learning  how  to  do  something 
that  will  support  life. 

I  observe  that  elders  are  fairly  willing  to  abet 

3  23 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

the  young  in  getting  married  if  only  the  adven- 
turers are  positively  enough  set  on  the  adven- 
ture and  have  the  courage  of  their  intentions. 
The  thing  that  the  wiser  elders  won't  do  if  they 
can  help  it  is  to  take  responsibility  about  the 
intending  parties  being  pleased  with  their  bar- 
gain. For  the  rest,  unless  the  adventure  is  too 
rash  or  premature,  or  they  have  violent  per- 
sonal objections,  the  elders,  as  far  as  I  see,  are 
apt  to  be  complaisant,  and  even  to  push  along 
an  affair  that  is  clearly  at  the  stage  where  it  is 
safe  to  push  it. 

The  cards  are  out  for  three  weeks  from  next 
Thursday.  It  was  the  first  our  friends  in  gen- 
eral heard  of  it,  which  was  as  it  should  be.  The 
flat  is  hired,  and  yesterday  I  got  my  pay  raised 
five  a  week.  Where  there's  a  will  there's  a  way 
to  break  it,  the  lawyers  say,  but  Cordelia  and 
I  have  passed  through  that  once,  and  our  will 
is  going  to  probate  this  time. 

I  am  thinking  about  what  we  shall  talk  about, 
for  talk  will  have  to  be  our  main  reliance  for 
entertainment.  There's  a  fireplace  in  the  flat, 
and  I  dare  say  I  shall  be  seen  going  home 
dragging  boards  and  boxes  after  me  like  the 
children  one  sees  in  the  street,  for  I  don't  know 

24 


BY  THE  SECOND  INTENTION 

how  we  shall  afford  any  wood  for  that  fireplace. 
Wood,  I  understand,  is  dear.  Never  mind; 
we  shall  have  a  fire  and  sit  before  it,  and  talk 
about  everything — about  votes  for  women 
(which  I  don't  want,  though  it  matters  little), 
whether  we  ought  to  be  abstainers  (I'd  rather 
not,  but  it  matters  little),  whether  the  good 
English  are  played  out,  about  the  future  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  the  United  States, 
whether  it  isn't  time  for  the  Democrats  to  shelve 
Thomas  Jefferson  and  get  a  new  prophet, 
whether  Tammany  will  ever  be  killed  per- 
manently dead  and  what  then,  whether  the 
People  have  got  any  sense,  whether  legislation 
has  an  important  effect  upon  divorce,  whether 
the  Americans  are  too  much  bent  on  substi- 
tuting legislation  for  character,  and  all  those 
things  that  one  thinks  about. 

I  wonder  if  she  will  be  willing  to  talk  about 
those  things!  Very  likely  she  won't.  It  will 
be  more  prudent,  I  think,  not  to  let  her  see  the 
catalogue  of  them  beforehand.  Unless  brought 
up  to  them  gently  she  might  shy.  One  talks,  I 
find,  to  another  person  a  good  deal  according 
to  what  is  in  the  other  person's  mind. 

And  for  a  change  we  can  gossip,  and  extenuate 

25 


INFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

our  neighbor's  faults,  first  agreeing  what  they 
are,  which  always  is  a  pleasant  exercise.  And 
when  somebody  makes  a  good  book  with  real 
meat  in  it,  well  served — if  any  one  should — we 
can  read  it,  and  that's  fun,  and  cheap,  and  will 
make  more  talk.  And  charities  are  interesting 
if  one  goes  at  them  right  (and  cheap  as  things 
go),  and  so  are  politics. 

It  is  such  an  interesting  world  if  you  get  the 
hang  at  all  of  what  is  going  on  in  it,  and  why, 
and  whither  things  are  tending!  I  do  love  to 
see  it  roll  along  and  to  try  to  puzzle  out  why 
things  happen  as  they  do.  It  will  be  fun  to 
talk  to  Cordelia  about  all  these  matters.  What 
is  there  about  a  woman's  mind — if  it  is  a  fairly 
good  one — that  it  is  so  extraordinarily  stimu- 
lating to  a  man's  mind,  so  that  when  you're  too 
tired  to  talk  to  a  man  you  can  chatter  on 
amazingly  to  a  woman,  provided  she's  the  right 
one!  They  beat  drink;  they  certainly  do! 
They  are  the  great  natural  stimulant  and  tonic 
for  mankind. 


n 

SOME  DETAILS  OF   LIVING 

ORDELIA  and  I  duly  got  married  (see  the 
newspaper  a  piece  back)  and  are  still  mar- 
ried, and,  speaking  for  myself  and,  as  far  as 
observation  enables  me,  for  Cordelia,  we  are  still 
pleased  with  our  audacious  experiment.  But 
why  should  I  call  it  audacious?  I  am  more  and 
more  impressed,  so  far,  with  the  calculating 
prudence  of  it,  and  surely  sensible  observers 
must  agree  with  me,  and  for  ten  who  will  think 
we  were  rash  to  get  married  on  sixty  dollars  a 
week  there  will  be  hundreds,  certainly,  who 
will  smile  at  the  idea  of  that  being  a  doubtful 
income  to  marry  on. 

Our  maid,  Matilda  Finn,  is  a  person  of  con- 
siderable talent.  I  doubt  whether  two  people 
who  aim  to  subsist  on  sixty  dollars  a  week  are 
entitled  to  have  a  maid  at  all.  I  dare  say  they 
belong  in  a  boarding-house,  or  else  in  a  flat 
where  they  do  their  own  work  and  put  at  least 

27 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

fifty  dollars  in  the  bank  the  first  of  every 
month.  Oh,  delightful  thought!  Imagine  be- 
ing six  hundred  dollars  to  the  good  at  the  end 
of  the  year,  and  putting  it  into  some  safe  gam- 
ble that  would  be  the  corner-stone  of  a  com- 
petence! And  if  I  had  only  courted  Matilda 
Finn  instead  of  Cordelia  it  would  have  been  so 
easy!  Do  you  remember  Andrew  Cannybee 
and  his  first  investment  in  Pullman?  But  he 
was  living  with  his  mother  then  and  had  few 
expenses.  I  suppose  the  money-savers  are 
folks  who  go  without  everything  they  want 
except  money  until  they  cease  to  want  it.  That 
would  have  been  all  right  if  I  had  wanted 
Matilda  Finn.  I  know  I  could  have  held  my- 
self down  to  self-denial  until  I  could  really 
afford  to  marry,  and  by  that  time  I  should  have 
got  over  wanting  Matilda.  Whereas  I  never 
could  endure  the  thought  of  not  wanting  Cor- 
delia. I  am  afraid  the  Cannybee  strain  in  me 
isn't  strong  enough  to  do  any  good.  I  seem  to 
like  life  while  it  is  here. 

All  the  same  I  like  Matilda,  who  is  part  of 
life  at  these  presents,  and  so  does  Cordelia. 
Matilda  is  cheerful,  she  is  clean  and  indulgent, 
and  she  can  cook.  When  food  is  scarce  and 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

dear  and  you  have  to  have  it,  you  don't  want 
to  have  it  fooled  with  by  the  wasteful  or  the 
inexpert.  The  little  that  man  wants  here  below 
he  has  to  have  two  or  three  times  a  day,  and  it 
does  make  a  difference  how  it  is  fixed  up  for 
him.  Consider  the  staples  of  nourishment- 
bread,  toast,  tea,  coffee,  bacon,  eggs,  chickens, 
chops,  beefsteak,  fish,  codfish,  oysters,  clams, 
lettuce,  rice,  beans,  milk,  and  the  package 
foods  that  some  of  us  eat  for  breakfast  to 
divert  our  minds  from  diet!  How  various  are 
the  dealings  of  the  human  mind  and  hand  with 
these  simple  alimentary  provisions!  What 
grace  or  defect  of  human  character  is  there  that 
cannot  find  its  demonstration  in  the  way  an  egg 
is  dropped  on  toast!  There  is  as  much  dif- 
ference in  toast  as  there  is  in  people;  there  is 
a  great  native  difference  in  eggs,  and  much  in- 
dividuality; no  two  slabs  of  bacon  are  alike 
to  start  with,  or  are  affected  quite  the  same  by 
smoke  and  other  processes  of  education.  When 
it  comes  to  coffee,  what  a  problem!  Leaving 
out  all  the  coffee  that  is  not  coffee  at  all,  con- 
sider the  horde  of  coffees  that  are  coffee;  their 
propensity  to  masquerade  under  names  that 
do  not  belong  to  them,  to  be  blended,  and  to 

39 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

taste  unexpectedly  every  time  you  get  a  new 
lot! 

But  give  the  coffees  their  due.  Nearly  all  of 
them  are  good.  It  is  only  that  some  of  them 
are  enough  better  than  others  to  interest  an 
aspiring  spirit  which  reaches  out  instinctively 
in  the  direction  of  the  highest  good  for  the 
money.  Such  a  spirit  will  early  recognize  that, 
food  being  variable,  the  mind  that  prepares  it 
should  be  constant  and  sagacious  in  its  pro- 
cesses. 

I  would  not  have  you  suppose  I  am  an  epi- 
cure. I  never  think  much  about  food  unless 
it  is  not  so  good  as  I  think  it  ought  to  be,  all 
things  considered;  or  else  is  better  than  I  ex- 
pected. There  needs  to  be  some  standard  of 
nourishment  in  a  family,  and  in  our  family  of 
three  it  has  to  be  adjusted  to  an  expenditure 
of  three  dollars  a  day.  Cordelia  says  that  I 
contribute  the  standard  and  the  dollars  and 
leave  her  to  furnish  the  adjustment.  That  is 
where  Matilda  Finn  comes  in.  I  asked  Mrs. 
French  once  if  Cordelia  could  cook — asked  her 
quite  casually,  and  not,  of  course,  as  though  it 
was  of  any  consequence.  She  said  yes,  that 
every  woman  could  cook,  and  that  Cordelia 

30 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

could,  of  course,  and  that  the  question  was 
whether  any  man  could  live  off  her  cooking. 
She  has  taken  cooking  lessons  since  then  and 
courses  in  Domestic  Science,  which  includes 
cooking,  and  I  think  she  can  do  it.  But  cook- 
ing is  an  agitating  job,  and  I  don't  like  to  have 
Cordelia  agitated.  Nor  is  there  any  need.  I 
like  better  to  have  her  stick  to  her  own  pro- 
fession, which  is  ministering  to  happiness.  I 
suppose  they  don't  teach  that  in  the  domestic- 
science  courses.  Cordelia  ministers  to  Matilda 
Finn's  happiness,  and  Matilda  cooks  and  does 
all  the  other  things  that  need  to  be  done  in  a 
flat,  except  what  Cordelia  and  I  do;  and  Cor- 
delia ministers  to  my  happiness  remarkably. 
All  sorts  and  conditions  of  folks  Cordelia  min- 
isters to:"  she  has  captivated  her  mother's 
market-man,  with  whom  she  talks  meat,  poul- 
try, fish,  politics,  and  current  events  every 
morning.  She  knows  all  his  reasons  for  the 
high  price  of  meat.  "That  man,"  she  said  the 
other  day,  "can  bamboozle  me  into  anything!" 
Nevertheless,  she  seems  to  be  getting  intimately 
acquainted  with  the  butcher  business  and  the 
anatomy  of  the  animals  on  which  we  elect  to 
subsist,  and  the  comparative  cost  and  edible- 
si 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

ness  of  their  various  sections.  The  spring  lamb 
that  we  had  for  dinner  the  day  Caseby  dined 
with  us  was  "a  bargain  I  got  off  of  Mr.  Cooper," 
who  had  an  oversupply  of  fore  quarters  and 
sold  one  at  a  great  reduction  to  young  Mrs. 
Jesup.  As  a  rule,  we  do  not  subsist  on  spring 
lamb  at  home  in  the  spring.  That  seems  to  be 
a  favorite  dinner-party  provision,  and  we  still 
dine  out  enough  to  keep  up  our  acquaintance 
with  it.  The  "lamb"  we  have  is  the  most 
neutral  of  all  meats,  unexciting,  but  sufficient 
for  the  purpose  of  nourishment. 

Cordelia  sings  at  her  work,  and  that  makes 
me  think  she  must  like  the  life.  Perhaps  I 
should  say  her  employments  rather  than  her 
work.  Being  away  all  day,  I  don't  know  very 
much  about  them,  but  at  least  I  hear  her  sing- 
ing while  she  is  putting  up  her  hair. 

This  matter  of  woman's  work  looks  impor- 
tant. I  wonder  what  they  do  all  day — girls, 
that  is,  like  Cordelia.  If  she  had  a  job  it  would 
simplify  matters,  particularly  if  it  was  a  re- 
munerated job,  for  I  dare  say  Cordelia  would 
spend  more  money  if  she  had  it.  /  could. 
But  it  would  have  to  be  some  kind  of  an  inde- 
pendent home  job,  like  painting  or  writing  or 

32 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

taking  in  washing.  If  she  went  out  to  work 
and  had  any  boss  but  me,  it  would  not  be 
tolerable.  Moreover,  if  she  had  a  job  that  she 
was  qualified  for  and  was  worthy  of  her  talents, 
she  would  probably  be  better  at  it  than  I  am 
at  mine  and  earn  more  at  it  than  I  do,  and 
then  where  would  I  come  in !  Think  of  us  both 
coming  home  tired  from  wage-earning!  Awful! 
I  am  glad  she  has  no  job  except,  as  I  said  be- 
fore, the  great  one  of  ministering  to  happiness. 
I  seem  to  be  just  a  poor  old-fashioned  monop- 
olist, not  much  farther  along  than  the  Stone 
Age. 

But  she  does  keep  busy  in  a  way.  I  hear  of 
her  making  calls — though  she  says  calls  are  a 
queer  employment  for  a  lady  who  lives  over  a 
tailor  shop — and  she  goes  to  see  her  mother, 
and  my  mother,  and  various  girls,  and  goes  to 
market,  and  sews  a  little  and  reads  a  little  and 
does  charities  a  good  deal,  and  has  girls  in  to 
lunch  and  feeds  them  on  I  don't  know  what. 
She  says  it's  not  wise  to  break  with  the  life  you 
know  any  more  than  you  have  to,  and  of  course 
that's  so;  though  neither  is  it  wise  to  hang  on 
to  the  life  you  know  when  you  can't  afford  it. 
The  life  you  know  isn't  the  only  good  one  even 

33 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

for  you.  I  have  come  to  feel  that  tremendously 
since  I  turned  anarchist — to  feel  that  life  is  a 
big  thing,  a  bully  thing,  and  that  we  are  fools 
to  cramp  it  and  trim  it  down  too  much  to  fit 
usage  and  environment.  Friends  are  very 
valuable,  acquaintance  is  valuable,  a  standard 
of  living  and  a  set  of  associations  when  once 
you  are  used  to  them  are  very  hard  to  shift 
from;  but  all  those  things  are  the  accessories 
of  life  rather  than  life  itself,  and  it  seems  a 
chicken-hearted  sort  of  prudence  that  would 
sacrifice  life  to  its  accessories. 

This  from  a  man  who  is  as  sensitive  as  I  am 
to  the  differences  in  dropped  eggs,  and  feels  as 
strongly  as  I  do  about  fish-balls  and  bacon,  and 
who  likes  caviare  when  it  is  really  good,  and 
alligator-pears,  and  pates  of  goose-livers,  may 
sound  a  little  forced;  but  must  it  follow  that 
because  one  sees  and  admires  the  trees  he  can- 
not see  the  forest? 

Yes,  I  am  glad  Cordelia  has  no  money- 
making  job,  but  I  suppose  that  is  no  argument 
against  such  employments  for  women  in  general 
who  need  them. ,  7,  being  so  gifted  in  money- 
getting  and  commanding  the  income  I  do,  did 
not  need  to  have  my  labors  supplemented  in 

34 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

the  wage-earning  line.  My  need  was  for 
assistance  in  spending  our  money. 

By  the  way,  as  I  meditate  on  money  and  my 
large  appetite  for  it  and  the  ways  of  getting  it, 
it  occurs  to  me  that  there  is  a  new  profession — 
muck-raking.  Maybe  it's  not  new,  since  noth- 
ing is,  but  at  any  rate  it's  coming  along  on  a 
good  slant  just  now,  is  very  lively,  looks  al- 
truistic, and  I  dare  say  can  be  made  modestly 
remunerative;  for  muck-rakers,  of  course,  like 
other  working  folks,  must  live.  More  than 
moderately  remunerative  it  can  hardly  be  with- 
out spoiling  it,  for  the  great  business  opportunity 
in  it  would  be  to  make  a  great  record  as  a  pros- 
ecutor and  then  be  retained  for  the  defense. 
To  me,  as  a  lawyer,  that  looks  good,  but  there 
are  those  who  would  gibe  at  it  as  a  sort  of  black- 
mail. 

Well,  there  does  seem  to  be  a  lot  of  tar  in 
money.  Sometimes  I  despair  of  ever  getting 
enough  to  keep  an  auto  on  without  having  to 
pay  some  impossibly  defiling  or  enslaving  price 
for  it;  but  I  haven't  got  to  have  an  auto  yet, 
so  I  take  courage. 

Father  and  Father-in-law  both  growl  at  the 
muck-rakers,  as  is  proper  enough  for  gentlemen 

35 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

of  their  years  and  responsibilities,  but  the  muck- 
rakers  look  to  me  like  microbes  of  a  very  natural 
and  timely  kind,  lawfully  and  inevitably  pro- 
duced, and  going  about  a  necessary  business 
with  a  catching  sort  of  enthusiasm.  When  they 
beat  a  bad  grab,  the  anarchist  in  me  insists  upon 
rejoicing,  no  matter  what  respect  the  lawyer  in 
me  may  feel  for  clients  who  appreciate  lawyers 
and  pay  them  suitably. 

Father-in-law  has  sent  me  three  gallons  of 
superior  European  champagne  put  up  in  bottles 
the  usual  way,  mostly  pints.  He  is  a  kind  man. 
Why  he  thinks  it  wise  to  cultivate  expensive 
thirsts  in  Cordelia  and  me  I  do  not  know,  but 
my  theory  is  that  he  thinks  a  taste  for  bever- 
ages that  we  can't  afford  will,  make  for  ab- 
stemiousness. So  it  will,  I  dare  say.  Cordelia 
says  the  gallons  are  just  a  tribute  of  affection, 
unsullied  by  ulterior  purposes  of  any  sort.  We 
are  going  to  ask  Father-in-law  to  dinner,  and 
that  is  a  great  tribute,  for  even  reduced  to  his 
simplest  needs  he  is  expensive  to  feed. 

Naturalists  have  observed  and  recorded  a 
tendency  in  married  people  to  duplication. 
That  is,  in  some  respects,  a  solemn  thought.  I 
understand  you  can  get  lots  more  room  in 


SOME  DETAILS  OF    LIVING 

Brooklyn  for  the  same  money,  and  people  do 
it;  but  to  me  that's  a  much  more  solemn 
thought  than  the  other  one — too  solemn  alto- 
gether. Up  the  island  there  are  extraordinary 
rows  and  successions  of  human  hives.  Cor- 
delia and  I  catch  a  Sunday  afternoon  auto- 
mobile ride  up  there  once  in  a  while  and  marvel 
at  them  as  we  pass.  One  could  get  a  fine  de- 
tachment up  there;  though  for  that  matter 
there  is  an  interesting  grade  of  detachment  to 
be  had  in  Brooklyn.  And  detachment  has  its 
value — breaks  habits,  brings  folks  in  some  ways 
harder  up  against  the  facts  of  life,  invites  a  new 
inspection  of  people,  brings  various  releases 
and  stimulations — but  I  don't  know  that  it  is 
a  thing  that  Cordelia  and  I  are  disposed  to 
chase  very  hard  for  its  own  sake.  We  are  hard 
enough  up  against  the  facts  of  life  as  it  is,  and 
we  are  gregarious  people  and  like  companions, 
and  if  we  got  a  good  detachment  would  go  right 
to  work,  I  suppose,  to  mitigate  it  by  new  asso- 
ciations. We  will  never  move  to  Harlem  or 
beyond  merely  for  the  sake  of  pioneering,  nor 
swap  associations  for  the  mere  benefit  of  swap- 
ping. And  yet  that's  what  the  Methodist 
ministers  used  to  do  under  the  old  three-years- 

37 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

in-a-place  rule — may  be  doing  it  still.  It  was 
the  intention  that  they  should  gather  no  moss, 
so  the  plan  was  to  keep  them  rolling.  To  me, 
now,  moss  looks  very  nice,  and  I  wouldn't  mind 
its  adhering.  I  love  old  associations  and  per- 
manence of  relation,  and  my  heart  is  even  hos- 
pitable to  some  fixity  of  condition;  but  there 
is  plenty  to  be  said  in  favor  of  wearing  the  gar- 
ments of  life  loose  enough  to  shed  them  when 
they  get  seriously  in  the  way.  One  should  be 
enough  of  a  change  artist  to  quit  a  part  he  can- 
not excel  in  before  the  scene-shifters  shut  him 
out.  The  predicament  of  people  who  haven't 
it  in  them  to  prosper  in  the  social  level  they 
find  themselves  in,  and  who  are  so  fettered  by 
the  conventions  and  expectations  of  that  level 
that  they  can't  break  into  another,  is  very 
pathetic.  We  hear  plenty  about  the  tragedies 
of  families  that  sink,  but  what  of  the  tragedies 
of  those  that  rise,  as  when  a  man  makes  a  raft 
of  money  and  his  sons  experiment  with  leisure, 
drink,  chorus  -  girls,  and  divorce;  and  his 
daughter,  for  lack  of  inviting  marital  oppor- 
tunities, is  obliged  to  elope  with  the  chauffeur! 
That  sounds  better  than  eloping  with  the  coach- 
man, as  used  to  happen;  but  still  there  is  a 

38 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

prejudice  against  it.  Of  course  advantages — 
most  of  them — are  advantageous,  else  civiliza- 
tion wouldn't  get  ahead;  but,  by  George! 
they  have  their  price.  If  Cordelia  and  I  were 
a  grain  less  stylish  we  might  be  living  in  a 
model  tenement  and  saving  money.  (I  won- 
der if  we  could  get  one  that  would  hold  Matilda 
too!)  The  residents  of  New  York  around  here 
where  we  live  are  roughly  divided  into  two 
classes,  people  who  eat  in  the  front  basement 
and  are  getting  rich,  and  people  who  are  too 
stylish  to  eat  in  the  front  basement,  and  have 
upstairs  dining-rooms  and  butler's  pantries, 
and  are  (some  of  them)  getting  poor.  The 
receipt  for  getting  rich  in  this  neighborhood  is 
— Eat  in  the  basement!  But  I'm  not  sure  that 
it  is  a  reliable  receipt.  It  tends  to  blight  some 
opportunities.  Anyhow,  it  does  not  fit  the 
ambitions  of  the  socially  ambitious  of  this  gen- 
eration, to  whom  eating  in  the  basement  would 
seem  to  conflict  with  about  all  that  is  delect- 
able in  life.  Of  course  basement  dining-rooms 
belong  to  the  habits  of  forty  years  ago,  and  in- 
vited the  simple  life,  which  now  for  the  most 
part  has  been  chased  into  flats.  But  the  truth 
remains  that  advantages  are  bought  with  a  price. 

4  39 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

It  is  harder  to  get  something  for  nothing 
than  we  think  it  is  when  we  read  of  wills  going 
to  probate.  They  do  go  there,  and  then  it  is 
to  observe  whether  the  heirs  get  the  money  or 
the  money  gets  the  heirs.  We  don't  take 
medicine  unless  we  are  sick.  Money  in  large 
chunks  is  pretty  strong  medicine,  but  we  take 
it  when  it  offers  without  regard  to  our  condi- 
tion, and  it  does  not  always  do  us  good. 

Tom  Merchant  was  saying  something  the 
other  day  to  the  effect  that  a  man  could  not 
be  of  very  considerable  use  in  the  world  until 
he  ceased  to  be  dependent  on  his  work  for  his 
living.  Of  course  that  is  not  so,  as  Lincoln's 
case  and  innumerable  others  attest,  and  as  new 
cases  keep  attesting  every  day.  Nevertheless, 
the  venerable  John  Bigelow  has  said  something 
very  like  what  Tom  said,  and  I  think  there  is 
a  slice  of  truth  in  it.  Money  in  store  is  power, 
and  makes  for  leisure  to  think  and  act,  and 
may  help  enormously,  in  a  crisis,  to  indepen- 
dence in  thought  and  action.  Lincoln  was  poor, 
but,  after  all,  he  had  enough  cash  in  hand  to 
spare  the  time  for  the  debate  with  Douglas  and 
for  all  the  politics  that  followed,  up  to  the  time 
when  he  began  to  draw  a  salary  as  President. 

40 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

The  trouble  with  the  chaps  that  come  early 
into  ready-made  money  is  that  so  few  of  them 
ever  learn  enough  about  common  human  life, 
and  people,  and  the  elements  of  the  job,  to  be 
considerably  useful,  even  if  they  aspire  to  be. 
Still,  I  think  they  do  better  nowadays  than  they 
used  to.  The  money-getting  school,  whatever 
course  you  take,  is  an  exacting  school.  Some- 
how you  have  to  deliver  the  goods — some  kind 
of  goods  that  somebody  is  willing  to  pay  for. 
I  wonder  how  much  the  girls  miss,  those  of 
them  who  do  miss  it,  by  not  taking  the  courses 
in  that  school !  Of  course,  they  miss  some  great 
possibilities  of  development,  but  against  that 
you  have  to  measure  what  they  would  miss  by 
not  being  able  to  do  two  kinds  of  things  in  the 
same  years,  and  sacrificing  what  they  get  as  it 
is,  for  what  they  might  get  as  it  might  be. 
There  comes  in  the  division  of  work  between 
men  and  women  and  the  difference  in  their 
natural  careers.  Cordelia  as  she  is,  for  me. 

Cordelia  and  I  are  agreed  that  we  will  have 
rhododendrons  in  our  garden.  Those  in  the 
Park  have  begun  to  bloom,  and  I  am  excessive- 
ly pleased  with  them.  They  have  such  a  fine 
Greek  name  that  takes  me  back  to  Xenophon's 

41 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

Anabasis,  and  such  splendid  blossoms  and  such 
interesting  shades  of  color,  and  then  they  bloom 
in  the  shade.  I  respect  them  most  of  all  for 
that.  To  live  in  the  shade  and  turn  out  so 
splendid — well,  allegorically  speaking,  it  hap- 
pens more  or  less  to  folks,  too.  It  will  cost 
us  something  to  have  a  good  lot  of  rhododen- 
drons in  our  garden,  but  when  it  comes  to 
planning  for  our  country  place  we  never  spare 
expense.  Why  should  we?  Frugality  of  im- 
agination is  no  saving  to  anybody.  Cordelia 
is  less  extravagant  in  that  particular  than  I  am, 
because  when  I  see  the  men  who  earn  a  lot  of 
money  I  speculate  in  my  mind  as  to  how  they 
do  it  and  whether  7  could  do  it,  and  I  usually 
decide  that  I  shall  be  able  to  presently  if  I  have 
time,  and  then,  naturally,  I  think  what  I  shall 
have  when  I  get  all  that  money,  and  just  now 
it  is  rhododendrons  because  they  are  just  coming 
along.  A  good  deal  goes  with  rhododendrons: 
hired  men,  domestic  animals,  chariots  of  loco- 
motion; I  dare  say  by  the  time  Cordelia  and  I 
get  around  to  have  them  aeroplanes  will  have 
become  a  reasonable  solicitation.  But  there's 
no  hurry.  The  rhododendrons  in  the  Park  are 
lovely,  and  I  dare  say  there  are  more  in  the 

42 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

Bronx  (if  you  can  get  there),  and  we  have  hos- 
pitable friends  who  have  them  in  gardens. 

This  observing  the  money-getters  and  notic- 
ing how  they  do  it,  and  computing  how  long 
it  will  take  to  learn  the  trick  and  acquire  the 
necessary  prestige,  is  all  right  enough  and  even 
useful,  but  it  plagues  me  when  I  get  my  mind 
too  much  on  it.  That's  not  really  the  way  to 
live — and  yet,  and  yet.  "The  life  is  more  than 
meat;  the  body  more  than  raiment,"  but,  hav- 
ing life,  meat  comes  very  handy,  and  having  a 
body,  raiment  is  convenient.  The  people  who 
miss  it  are  those  who  starve  life,  or  overlook  it, 
in  their  solicitude  for  meat  and  motors. 

The  prevalent  habit  of  going  to  Europe  is 
curious.  For  that  matter  the  habits  of  con- 
temporary Americans  are  very  curious  —  the 
motor-car  habit  so  conspicuous  just  now,  their 
travel  habit,  much  cultivated  by  farmers  in 
winter  and  by  city  people  in  summer.  They 
are  remarkable  habits;  instructive,  no  doubt; 
expensive,  but  somehow  at  present  there  is 
money  for  them.  Cordelia  says  she  has  trav- 
eled, and  need  not  go  on  the  road  again  for  some 
time.  I  haven't,  but  I  am  content  to  wait 
until  it  is  convenient.  This  town  of  New  York 

43 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

is  trying  to  live  in  in  some  ways,  but  it  can  be 
said  for  it  that  here  a  great  many  things  are 
brought  to  the  door.  There  are  pictures  here, 
and  very  pleasing  objects  in  the  shop  windows, 
and  a  variety  of  people,  and  spoken  languages 
enough  to  satisfy  the  most  ambitious,  and  a 
mighty  interesting  assortment  of  architecture, 
and  more  making  while  you  wait.  Some  Ameri- 
cans in  time  past  have  been  to  Europe  to  good 
purpose — as  witness  our  newer  architecture — 
and  some  keep  going  there  to  pretty  good  pur- 
pose every  year.  That  makes  it  the  easier  to 
stay  at  home  and  say  Codum  non  animum  to 
oneself,  and  grub  along.  Cordelia  and  I  be- 
stow some  of  our  spare  attention  on  the  growth 
of  characters.  They  don't  seem  to  grow  so 
very  much  on  the  road.  Intelligence  and  powers 
of  comparison  may  get  a  boost  in  the  school  of 
itineracy,  but  character  not  so  probably.  Cor- 
lear  Van  Terminal  has  been  to  Europe  once  or 
twice  every  year  since  I  can  remember,  and 
gads  constantly  when  at  home,  and  all  but 
sleeps  in  a  motor-car,  and  yet,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  he's  always  just  the  same  as  he  was  the 
last  time.  I  can't  see  that  he's  got  ahead  one 
lap.  Chapman  says  the  soul  of  man  requires 

44 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

to  be  fed  on  the  Bible  and  the  Greek  poets. 
One  can  do  that  at  home,  and  one  can  work  at 
home,  and  have  faith  and  endure  and  plug 
along — all  quite  useful  to  character,  and  as 
developing  in  some  ways  as  travel  and  Europe 
can  be  in  others. 

Cordelia  and  I  have  been  reading  about  the 
Wesleys  and  the  characters  they  got  and  how 
they  got  them.  There  were  eighteen  children 
or  thereabouts,  and  a  dozen  or  so  grew  up.  Fine 
people,  too;  admirable  stock  and  developed  by 
discipline,  privation,  and  pious  training,  all 
tempered  by  affection,  humor,  and  lots  of 
quality  in  the  trainers.  It  makes  you  feel  that 
character  is  a  very  expensive  product,  and 
hardly  to  be  had  at  the  ten-cent  store  where  we 
and  our  contemporaries  are  prone  to  go  for  it. 

The  Wesleys  were  poor;  very  much  poorer 
than  is  thought  at  all  suitable  in  these  times, 
even  for  the  reverend  clergy  or  for  the  teachers 
of  our  youth.  The  father  was  a  clergyman; 
the  mother  was  a  lady  of  excellent  abilities  and 
education,  and  they  lived  in  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries.  Food  was  plain  and 
hard  to  get  in  that  family,  and  raiment  was  only 
slightly  related  to  embellishment,  and  sickness 

45 


EEFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

was  frequent  and  poverty  perpetual;  but  with 
what  audacity  those  Wesleys  took  hold  on  life! 
It  makes  our  timid  overtures  look  like  mill- 
pond  voyaging.  Really  it  is  wholesome  to  sit 
by  the  window,  within  ear-shot  of  the  rattle  of 
the  street-cars  and  the  chug-chug  of  the  auto- 
mobiles, and  read  of  the  past  straits  of  the  strait- 
ened and  the  courage  of  the  bold,  and  observe 
on  what  shoulders  of  men  and  women,  and 
through  what  bogs  of  privation,  civilization 
has  come  along. 

Not  that  the  Wesleys  had  a  preference  for 
privation.  The  Reverend  Samuel  scrambled 
actively  to  maintain  his  family,  but  the  increas- 
ing family  outran  his  best  diligence.  We  have 
changed  all  that.  Families  are  less  apt  to  out- 
run the  paternal  diligence  in  these  days.  So 
far  as  numbers  go,  they  trudge  along  respect- 
fully behind  the  census  man  and  look  over  his 
shoulder  at  the  figures.  But  that  change  is  all 
in  the  day's  work,  and  springs  out  of  changed 
conditions.  People  in  our  time  are  not  curious 
enough  about  the  processes  of  nature  to  raise 
very  large  families  in  order  that  they  may 
watch  near  at  hand  the  workings  of  the  rule 
about  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  What  they 

46 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

can  observe  of  the  application  of  that  rule  in 
written  biography  and  among  the  neighbors 
seems  to  suffice,  and  in  their  own  personal 
speculation  they  seem  to  care  for  no  more 
progeny  than  they  think  they  can  contrive 
survival  for,  whether  they  are  fittest  or  not. 
So  butts  in  man,  and  tries  to  adjust  the  pro- 
cesses of  nature  to  match  his  judgment  and  his 
taste  in  expenditure. 

When  it  gets  hot  Cordelia  will  be  going  off 
to  her  father's  country  palace  in  Connecticut, 
varying  that  experience  in  due  time  by  a  so- 
journ in  my  father's  country  palace  in  New 
Jersey,  and  I  shall  spend  with  her  so  much  of 
the  time  as  my  urban  duties  permit.  That  will 
save  us  from  dependence  on  any  fresh-air  funds 
this  year.  Parents  are  a  considerable  con- 
venience, especially  nowadays,  when  so  many 
of  them  have  learned  their  place,  and  especially 
in  this  town  of  New  York,  where  it  costs  all  you 
can  earn  to  provide  a  winter  habitation,  and 
where  the  young  wives  of  earnest  workers  like 
me  are  apt  to  be  a  good  deal  out  of  a  job  in 
summer.  Much  more  systematic  provision  is 
*made  to  carry  my  kind  of  man  through  the 
summer  than  for  Cordelia's  kind  of  woman — 

47 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

the  clubs,  for  example.  For  man  and  wife  at 
our  stage  of  life  parents,  duly  qualified  and 
equipped,  are  a  very  suitable  and  timely  pro- 
vision. Indeed,  I  feel  sometimes  that  the 
worthlessness  and  miscellaneous  degeneracy  of 
parents  in  these  times  is  exaggerated.  I  don't 
say  this  by  way  of  casting  an  anchor  to  the 
windward,  nor  out  of  mere  magnanimity,  but 
because  I  honestly  think  so.  People  say  that 
parental  authority  is  all  gone.  Some  think  it 
good  riddance;  others  lament.  Since  democ- 
racy came  to  be  the  fashion  everybody  wants 
his  own  way  more  than  formerly,  and  gets  it 
rather  more,  children  included.  But  parental 
direction  is  still  a  factor  in  life,  and  parental 
influence  is  enormous,  and  influence  gets  to 
the  springs  of  action  and  character  even  more 
effectually  than  dogmatic  authority.  It  is 
much  harder  for  a  fool  father  to  blight  a  Mira- 
beau  nowadays,  and  those  Wesley  parents  that 
I  spoke  of  might  in  our  time  have  meddled  less 
with  their  daughters'  marriages,  thereby,  pos- 
sibly, avoiding  some  disasters;  for  the  Wesley 
girls  chose  ill,  but  their  parents,  in  choosing  for 
them,  chose  still  worse.  Parents  doubtless 
realize  the  limitations  of  their  calling  better 

48 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

than  they  did,  and  a  good  deal  more  is  done  in 
these  days  than  formerly  to  piece  out  their 
deficiencies  and  help  them  with  their  duties. 
Doctors  give  them  better  advice  than  the  Wes- 
ley parents  got;  schools  in  this  country — in 
spite  of  the  constant  stream  of  criticism  and 
deprecation  which  schools  endure  —  average 
surely  a  great  deal  better  than  schools  did  fifty 
years  ago.  The  raising  and  training  of  the 
young,  being  as  important  a  matter  as  there  is 
in  sight,  has  had  protracted  attention  from  some 
of  the  best  minds,  and  has  had  money  showered 
on  it  in  a  huge  profusion.  All  that  has  been 
more  or  less  helpful  to  parents,  but  it  does  not 
warrant  the  idea,  so  popular  among  current 
commentators,  that  parents  have  come  to  be 
supernumeraries  on  the  public  stage.  That  is 
a  ridiculous  notion,  the  absurdity  of  which 
would  be  demonstrated  in  about  half  a  day  if 
parents  universally  should  quit  work  and  take 
a  half-holiday. 

We  ought  to  save  a  little  money  this  summer 
living  on  our  fathers.  It  is  a  grand  way  to 
save.  I  don't  know  of  a  better.  It  makes 
frugality  possible  without  self-denial — at  least 
without  privation.  They  say  there  is  excellent 


EEFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

sport  to  be  got  out  of  self-denial,  and  I  read 
that  saving  money  and  the  repression  of  the 
impulse  to  spend  it  make  like  everything  for 
the  development  of  character.  I  dare  say  that 
is  so.  It  is  all  a  part  of  self-control,  and  of 
government  by  intelligence  instead  of  by  im- 
pulse. And  self-control,  including  timely  and 
suitable  repression  of  expenditure,  means  free- 
dom, and  power  to  give,  and  the  power  to  do, 
and  the  power  to  jump  in  and  seize  an  oppor- 
tunity. Possibly  I  can  acquire  the  accomplish- 
ment of  not  buying  some  things  that  I  want, 
even  though  I  have  the  money  to  pay  for  them. 
That  will  be  a  wonderful  acquisition  to  me, 
though  I  have  got  so  far  as  to  be  mighty  par- 
ticular about  what  I  buy  on  credit.  One  has 
got  to' get  as  far  as  that  if  he  is  going  to  get 
married  on  such  an  income  as  ours. 

That  was  a  great  stroke — getting  married. 
I  don't  see  how  I  had  the  nerve  to  do  it.  Prob- 
ably I  hadn't.  I  dare  say  we  got  married  on 
Cordelia's  nerve,  for  when  you  come  down  to 
the  facts  it  was  she  who  took  most  of  the 
chances,  and  really  made  the  choice.  To  choose 
and  to  decide  things  seem  in  our  day  to  be  very 
largely  women's  work.  I  am  more  and  more 

50 


SOME  DETAILS  OF  LIVING 

impressed  with  that  as  I  go  more  and  more  to 
Cordelia  to  get  her  views.  I  get  them  on  pretty 
much  everything  except  points  of  law.  I  am 
the  specialist  on  that  and  on  the  earning  of 
money,  but  she  is  the  specialist  on  the  arrange- 
ment of  life.  I  guess  she  is  an  obedient  wife, 
but  in  practice  I  seem  to  make  suggestions  and 
she  to  make  decisions.  She  makes  them  with 
great  consideration  and  indulgence  for  me,  and 
with  a  degree  of  judgment  that  saves  me  much 
mental  effort.  The  opportunities  of  mental 
effort  that  I  enjoy  below  Canal  Street,  between 
ten  o'clock  and  six,  suffice  to  keep  my  mind 
exercised,  and  I  am  no  glutton  about  making 
unnecessary  mental  efforts  after  I  get  uptown. 
Perhaps  that  simplifies  life  for  Cordelia.  I 
wonder  what  women  do  whose  husbands  don't 
have  to  work! 


Ill 

COMMODITIES  AND   CONTENTMENT 

T  11  TE  have  been  out  to  Orange  County  to 
V  V  spend  a  week-end  with  the  Peytons. 
They  are  about  our  age,  but  differ  from  us  in  con- 
dition in  that  they  have  adequate  means  of  sup- 
port. Archie  Peyton  got  them  by  inheritance, 
and  they  are  very  ample  and  enable  Archie  and 
Eleanor  to  have  all  the  desirable  things  and  do 
everything  they  want  to.  They  try  conscien- 
tiously to  live  up  to  their  opportunities,  making 
pretty  hard  work  of  it,  but  that's  natural,  for 
it  is  hard  work.  They  went  abroad  in  the 
summer,  and  now  they  are  providing  country 
lodging  and  food  and  sport  for  their  available 
friends.  This  sport  is  golf  and  tennis  and  road 
exercises,  relieved  by  dabs  of  riding  after 
hounds,  for  the  Orange  County  Hunt  meets 
out  in  their  country.  Eleanor  says  it's  nice, 
except  that  they  have  to  invite  too  many  peo- 
ple who  have  had  too  much  to  eat  and  are 

52 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

trying  to  get  thin,  whereas  it  would  be  more 
satisfactory  to  be  inviting  people  who  have 
had  too  little  to  eat  and  were  trying  to  get  fat. 
That's  not  why  they  asked  us,  for  we  had 
been  living  on  our  parents  all  summer  and  were 
quite  plump.  They  have  got  motor-cars,  horses, 
butlers,  valets,  chrysanthemums,  greenhouses, 
and  all  the  apparatus  of  pride.  For  us  on  sixty 
dollars  a  week  it  is  rather  expensive  even  to 
nibble  at  it.  We  can't  do  it  often,  but  we  saved 
money  living  on  our  parents,  and  the  fall  is 
a  grand  season,  and  to  fill  one's  lungs  with  the 
air  of  it  and  one's  vision  with  autumn  colors  is 
worth  some  fiscal  strain,  and  it  always  does  me 
good,  too,  spiritually  even  more  than  physically, 
to  get  over  a  little  easy  country  on  a  horse. 
Besides,  Archie  is  my  client,  and  that's  im- 
portant. I  have  discovered  that  one  of  the 
great  secrets  of  prosperity  and  advancement 
in  this  world,  especially  hi  the  profession  that 
I  affect,  is  to  have  one's  coevals  grow  up  and 
prosper  and  have  business,  especially  law  busi- 
ness, that  somebody  must  be  paid  to  do.  When 
people  have  these  opportunities  of  lawful  gain 
to  bestow  they  seem  to  like  to  bestow  them  on 
habitual  friends,  provided  that  they  have  any 

53 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

and  can  persuade  themselves  that  they  are 
competent.  A  great  deal  of  opportunity  goes 
by  association — is  bound  to. 

To  be  honest,  I  did  not  make  all  these  dis- 
coveries solely  on  my  own  hook.  Though  they 
are  simple  enough.  Major  Brace  expounded 
some  of  them  to  me  after  dinner.  He  gave  me 
great  encouragement  in  the  effort  to  exist. 
Promotion,  he  said,  cometh  neither  from  the 
East  nor  the  West,  but  from  the  cemetery,  so 
it  was  almost  sure  to  come  to  any  one  that 
could  hold  out;  and  in  the  long  run  a  man  who 
was  sober,  competent  and  diligent,  and  in- 
telligent about  his  associations  couldn't  very 
well  miss  it.  There  were  so  many  advantageous 
jobs  to  distribute  and  each  generation  had  them 
in  turn,  as  the  world  and  what  is  in  it  came  to 
be  its  property.  Moreover,  as  things  go  now 
and  with  us,  each  generation  has  a  lot  more 
things  and  opportunities  and  good  employ- 
ments than  the  generation  that  preceded  it, 
not  only  absolutely,  but  per  capita,  because  the 
increase  of  wealth  and  business  is  outrunning  the 
increase  of  population.  It  wasn't  a  scramble, 
the  Major  insisted,  for  a  share  in  a  limited 
quantity  of  goods,  but  for  an  unlimited  quantity, 

54 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

and  the  harder  the  scramble  the  more  there  was 
to  distribute. 

All  that  came  out  of  a  discussion  whether 
we  should  restrict  our  wants  or  try  to  satisfy 
them.  Try  to  satisfy  them,  the  Major  said. 
Effort  in  that  direction  enriches  and  develops 
civilization.  It  tends  to  increase  the  supply  of 
commodities.  It  is  not  the  satisfied  people, 
nor  the  people  who  are  content  to  go  without, 
that  make  civilization  go  forward,  but  the  un- 
satisfied ones,  who  want  a  lot  of  things  they 
have  not  got,  and  get  out  and  go  after  them 
and  build  railroads  and  factories  and  improve 
agriculture  and  invent  machinery  and  multiply 
automobiles  and  take  an  interest  in  aeroplanes 
and  try  to  accumulate  money  and  keep  it  em- 
ployed. 

"Are  you  doing  all  those  things,  Major?" 
said  I. 

"Me?  Oh  no!  I  belong  to  the  police.  My 
job  is  to  help  to  keep  order  and  protect  property. 
I  never  had  one  of  the  large-sized  appetites  for 
commodities — just  food,  clothes,  shelter,  money 
in  the  bank,  and  something  to  give  away,  and 
protection  against  rainy  days,  and  enough  to 
keep  my  wife  and  children  off  the  Charity 

5  55 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

Organization  when  I  get  run  over  by  a  motor- 
car— that's  all  I  want.  You  see,  I'm  a  lazy 
man  and  like  to  read  the  newspaper  and  invite 
my  soul,  and  everything  I  can't  get  by  working 
five  or  six  hours  a  day  I  go  without.  Don't 
take  me  for  a  pattern.  I  haven't  got  the  prog- 
ress of  civilization  really  at  heart." 

"The  express-drivers  help  it  on,  I  suppose, 
Major,  when  they  strike  for  more  pay?"  They 
were  striking  at  that  time. 

"No  doubt.  All  that  should  help  distribu- 
tion, provided  the  funds  they  are  all  striking 
to  share  exist  in  sufficient  quantity.  Distri- 
bution is  next  in  importance  to  production. 
You've  got  to  have  something  to  distribute, 
and  strikes  are  not  immediately  helpful  to  pro- 
duction, as  you  may  have  noticed,  but  the 
organization  of  labor  ought  to  be  helpful  to 
distribution.  Only  nowadays  when  an  im- 
portant strike  is  won  the  cost  of  it  is  immediate- 
ly shifted  onto  the  general  public  by  a  gentle 
elevation  of  prices." 

The  Major  is  a  lawyer  and  practises  con- 
siderably as  a  trustee,  and  is  doubtless  more 
concerned  with  the  philosophy  of  business  than 
if  his  energies  were  enlisted  in  selling  goods  and 

56 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

wresting  a  profit  out  of  it.  "Mankind  can  be 
eased  considerably  in  this  earthly  competition," 
he  went  on,  "by  great  increases  of  production, 
great  extensions  of  agriculture  and  manufactur- 
ing and  transportation,  and  great  economies  in 
all  of  them,  provided  that  distribution  fairly 
keeps  pace  with  production."  It  comes  nearer 
to  doing  so,  he  thought,  than  all  the  exhorters 
and  socialist  people  admit,  because  products 
have  to  find  a  market;  but  when  it  comes  to 
that,  this  is  a  fairly  roomy  world,  with  many 
mouths  and  backs  in  it,  and  transportation  is 
cheap  and  markets  are  world-wide,  and  goods 
as  yet  don't  necessarily  pile  up  on  any  of  us 
because  there  are  a  lot  of  them  produced. 

And  so  the  Major  argued  in  effect  that  one 
way  to  help  bring  on  the  millennium  was  to 
increase  the  production  and  distribution  of 
commodities.  I  suppose  that  is  one  way. 
There  must  be  some  connection  between  the 
millennium  and  civilization.  The  millennium 
isn't  going  to  swoop  down  on  a  world  that  has 
no  meat  in  the  house  and  where  half  the  people 
live  in  trees.  It  is  true  that  it  was  not  a  lack 
of  commodities  that  drove  Eve  to  eat  the  apple 
and  brought  on  working  for  a  living,  and  most 

57 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

of  us  realize  that  man  cannot  live  by  bread 
alone,  and  that  with  binsful  of  commodities 
on  every  corner  free  for  the  taking  the  world 
would  not  be  saved  nor  the  folks  in  it  satisfied 
and  happy.  What  an  interesting  simplification 
of  wants  would  happen  in  that  case,  and  how 
quickly  people  would  come  to  ascertain  what 
they  really  needed  and  refuse  to  be  loaded  up 
with  anything  else!  Still,  there  is  a  connection 
between  human  progress  and  wants  and  the 
commodities  that  appease  them.  A  mission- 
ary's daughter  told  me  once  about  her  father's 
experience  with  the  South- African  blacks.  Now 
and  then  he  would  make  a  convert,  and  always, 
if  it  was  a  thorough  job,  the  convert  would  be- 
gin to  reach  out  after  civilization — some  clothes, 
a  bigger  dwelling — presently,  I  dare  say,  a  top- 
hat.  It  wasn't  all  mere  acquisitiveness,  either, 
for  some  of  the  incidents  of  conversion  were  in- 
convenient, especially  the  troublesome  domestic 
readjustment  called  for  by  the  theory  of  the 
sufficiency  of  one  wife.  Of  course,  the  millen- 
nium may  swoop  down  and  find  us  running 
about  in  skins  or  less,  and  living  on  roots,  but 
I  bet  it  won't.  It  is  much  more  likely  to  be 
welcomed  by  flocks  of  aeroplanes  to  an  enor- 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

mously  productive  earth,  worked  for  all  it  is 
worth  by  people  intelligent  enough  to  have 
abolished  poverty  and  solved  the  problem  of 
distribution. 

What  does  man  want  here  below,  anyway? 
Room  and  bath,  food,  clothes,  a  newspaper, 
and  a  job  and  fair  opportunities  to  better  him- 
self. He  has  got  the  newspaper  already.  In 
this  country,  at  least,  there  are  enough  news- 
papers to  go  around,  and  in  the  cities  any  one 
who  declines  to  buy  one  can  supply  himself  out 
of  the  first  ash  barrel.  There  is  nothing  so 
cheap  as  newspapers,  and  that  is  a  consequence 
of  the  pressure  of  commodities  on  the  market. 
The  advertiser  pays  all  but  a  cent's  worth  of 
the  cost  of  the  newspaper,  and  would  gladly 
pay  that,  no  doubt,  but  for  the  fear  of  arousing 
the  reader's  suspicions.  How  much  this  has 
to  do  with  the  fact  that  I  hear  of  likely  young 
men  who  come  out  of  the  nurseries  of  learning 
and  look  wistfully  at  the  newspapers  and  fail 
to  see  attractive  jobs  on  them  and  go  away 
and  do  something  else,  I  don't  know.  It  may  be 
that  likely  young  men  never  did  troop  in  large 
swarms  into  newspapering.  Banking  usually 
looks  better  to  them,  because  men  get  rich  at 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

it,  and  law  because  a  knowledge  of  it  is  no 
hindrance  in  any  calling. 

The  supply  of  rooms  and  baths  is  not  so  near- 
ly equal  to  human  needs  as  the  supply  of  news- 
papers, but  it  is  gaining  on  the  population. 
Out  there  at  the  Peytons'  house,  for  example, 
it  has  caught  up.  In  all  the  newer  country 
'houses  hereabouts  the  great  architectural  fea- 
ture is  room  and  bath.  In  a  Long  Island  house 
just  completed  that  I  inspected  last  spring 
before  the  family  moved  in  there  were  between 
twenty  and  twenty -five  bathrooms.  There 
were  three  in  the  family,  with  a  liability  to 
guests  if  the  owner's  wife  ever  succeeded  in 
getting  rested.  I  thought  this  marked  a  con- 
siderable forward  stride  in  civilization.  Church 
unity  still  hangs  back  a  bit,  but  we  are  getting 
pretty  strong  on  plumbing,  and  the  millennium 
may  find  us  with  a  bath  apiece. 

The  Peytons  hadn't  so  many  bathrooms, 
because  their  house  was  not  so  large  as  the 
Long  Island  house,  and  they  had  to  save  part 
of  it  for  clothed  appearances;  but  they  had 
many,  and  Cordelia  and  I  admired  them  very 
much.  Living  in  a  six-hundred-dollar  New 
York  flat  makes  marvelously  for  tie  apprecia- 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

tion  of  space,  light,  air,  and  running  water. 
Of  course  the  Peytons'  country  house  had  all 
these  blessings,  and,  besides,  was  delightfully 
fresh  and  clean  and  embellished  with  very 
pleasing  adornments.  "No  doubt,  Cordelia," 
said  I,  "you  might  have  had  a  set  of  things  like 
this  if  you  had  shown  a  little  timely  judgment'." 
"Possibly;"  said  Cordelia;  "this  is  a  nice  set, 
too.  How  many  bathrooms  shall  we  need, 
Peregrine?" 

"One — two — four — six;  six  will  do  us,  I 
think,  with  a  little  management  and  a  few 
extra  sets  of  bath-robes  and  slippers.  We 
don't  want  to  keep  a  plumber.  To  have  more 
than  a  dozen  makes  a  home  too  much  like  a 
hotel." 

But  there  are  a  number  of  things  that  we 
shall  want  before  we  have  even  one  house  with 
even  six  bathrooms  in  it.  I  do  not  greatly 
covet  a  superfluity  of  bathrooms,  though 
enough  of  them  is  one  of  the  great  luxuries  of 
our  time.  Hot  water  is  one  of  the  leading 
valuables  of  life — one  of  the  things  that  help 
to  reconcile  humanity  to  civilization  and  to 
offset  its  interference  with  such  privileges  as 
living  out-of-doors  and  not  having  newspapers. 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

That  has  long  been  appreciated.  I  believe  the 
Greeks  liked  hot  water  and  made  provision  to 
have  it.  Certainly  the  Romans  liked  it  and 
went  in  strong  for  baths.  The  English  have 
liked  it  and  had  it  in  fair  quantity,  along  with 
daily  deluges  of  cold  water.  We  Americans 
delight  in  it  and  have  more  of  it  already,  I 
suppose,  than  any  people  ever  had  before,  and 
our  supply  is  constantly  increasing  and  con- 
stantly spreading  from  the  cities  to  the  country. 
It  is  cheap,  as  things  go,  and  there  is  fair  pros- 
pect that  there  will  eventually  be  enough  to 
go  around.  To  have  a  universal  supply  of  hot 
water  and  newspapers  and  a  long  start  toward 
a  universal  supply  of  what  we  call  education  is 
doing  not  so  ill  as  things  go.  I  can  wait  for  the 
six  bathrooms,  or  even  three.  We  have  one 
now.  One  is  a  great  blessing.  I  suppose  it  is 
our  egotism  that  makes  us  more  or  less  indiffer- 
ent to  what  is  not  ours  and  cannot  be  for  the 
present.  What  most  of  us  want  is  the  next 
thing — the  thing  almost  within  our  reach.  We 
don't  think  about  the  things  that  are  altogether 
beyond  the  scope  of  our  fortunes.  We  do  not 
covet  them,  nor  are  we  jealous  of  our  neighbors 
who  have  them,  unless  we  conclude  that  we 

62 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

have  too  little  because  they  have  too  much. 
If  the  competition  seems  to  us  fair,  we  rather 
like  to  see  prizes  go  to  those  who  can  win  them, 
for  a  life  with  prizes  in  it  for  winners,  even 
material  prizes,  looks  richer  and  more  attrac- 
tive to  most  of  us  than  a  life  planned  on  the 
principle  of  a  division  of  the  gate  money  among 
all  who  come  in. 

Do  you  notice  how  strong  the  propensity  is 
among  all  the  fairly  comfortable  people  to  con- 
sider their  own  condition  and  their  own  stand- 
ards as  normal  and  truly  desirable,  and  those 
of  other  folks,  whether  they  have  more  or  less, 
as  a  little  off?  I  think  that  propensity  is  a 
wonderful  provision  for  human  happiness. 
We  value,  as  a  rule,  what  seems  the  best  thing 
obtainable  for  ourselves.  Whether  it  is  abun- 
dance or  a  stimulating  degree  of  privation,  we 
incline  to  think  it  is  a  good  thing  for  us  and  a 
better  thing  than  other  people  have  who  have 
something  different. 

"Cordelia,"  said  I,  while  we  were  talking 
about  the  bathroom,  "you  might  have  got  a 
better  set  of  things  with  some  other  man,  but 
he  would  not  have  the  experience  or  the  dis- 
cipline that  I  shall  have  by  the  time  I  have  ac- 

63 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

quired  the  set  of  things  that  you  ought  event- 
ually to  get  with  me."  There  you  are!  We 
think  we're  better  off  than  the  Peytons  because 
we  haven't  got  so  much  as  they  have,  and  better 
off  than  the  Goves  because  we've  got  more 
(mostly  prospective)  than  they  have.  We  are 
the  standard.  We  laugh  at  ourselves,  but  sure- 
ly it's  a  fine  thing  to  have  so  strong  a  bent  tow- 
ard toleration  of  things  as  they  are,  and  ex- 
pectation of  being  pleased  with  them  as  they're 
going  to  be.  I  suppose  it  is  just  a  different 
form  of  this  same  self-satisfaction  that  makes 
the  teetotalers  want  to  vote  away  everybody's 
grog,  and  the  college  authorities  insist  that  all 
the  boys  shall  want  to  be  high  scholars  like 
themselves,  and  the  appeased  women  deprecate 
the  agitations  of  the  unappeased  for  woman's 
suffrage. 

Probably  Cordelia  and  I  are  exceptionally 
resigned  to  our  condition;  more  so  than  the  aver- 
age of  mankind.  Yes,  I  suspect  that  is  so,  but 
I  suspect  also  that  it  is  only  a  provisional  resig- 
nation. We  reached  out  and  got  the  next 
thing — each  other.  That  was  highly  satis- 
factory and  a  good  deal  better  than  if  we  had 
waited  for  something  else.  But  this  reaching 

64 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

out  for  the  next  thing  seems  to  be  a  continuing 
process,  and  I  suspect  it  has  to  go  on  till 
stopping-time,  and  that  satisfaction  in  life  is 
pretty  closely  geared  to  the  ability  to  maintain 
it  effectively.  That  is  not  altogether  a  soothing 
reflection,  but  I  don't  know  that  it  is  desirable 
that  all  reflections  should  be  soothing.  A  fair 
proportion  of  them  ought  to  be  stimulating. 
I  observe  that  I  read  the  writings  of  the  efficient 
when  my  energies  are  high,  and  when  they  are 
low  find  solace  in  those  of  the  lazy — only  they 
must  not  be  too  lazy  to  write.  Some  of  the  very 
best  writers  were  lazy,  and  struggled  with  it. 
Maybe  it's  hard  work  to  be  a  writer,  but  then 
it's  hard  work  to  be  much  of  anything.  But 
that's  nothing!  Nobody  wastes  sympathy,  or 
ought  to,  on  hard  workers,  provided  they  get 
in  fair  measure  what  they  go  out  after.  And 
one  of  the  greatest  things  they  get  is  increased 
ability  to  work  hard.  This  is  not  entirely  my 
discovery.  It  was  suggested  by  an  aged  friend, 
but  as  far  as  I  have  experimented  with  it  I 
think  it  is  so.  Of  course,  the  suggestion  was 
accompanied  by  a  reminder  in  quotation-marks 
that  life  would  be  endurable  except  for  its 
pleasures,  but  that's  not  to  be  accepted  too 

65 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

confidently.  It  depends  on  the  pleasures  and 
whether  they  please  or  not.  There  are  a  lot 
of  things  that  are  labeled  "pleasure,"  and  most 
of  them  are  price-marked  in  more  or  less  for- 
bidding figures,  but  the  considerable  satisfac- 
tions of  life  seem  to  be  conditions  of  the  mind 
which  may  be  related  to  living  conditions  that 
cost  money,  but  which  are  not  themselves  price- 
marked  in  figures  that  are  at  all  plain.  There's 
polo,  a  good,  lively  pleasure  and  fairly  high- 
priced  and  consumptive  also  of  time,  but  I 
judge  the  main  value  of  active  sports  of  that 
sort  to  aspiring  men  is  indirect.  They  contrib- 
ute to  a  physical  efficiency  which  is  useful  just 
so  far  as  it  promotes  mental  efficiency — sanity 
and  activity  of  mind,  spontaneity  of  thought 
and  speech  and  power.  No  doubt  for  some 
men  sports  are  a  form  of  discipline.  They  train 
some  spirits  to  exertion,  and  make  for  energy 
and  supply  driving  force  for  work,  but,  dear  me, 
they  take  a  lot  of  time  and  tend  to  consume 
more  energy  than  they  furnish.  They  are  fine 
for  boys,  soldiers,  Englishmen,  and  people  with 
a  disposition  to  grow  fat,  and  an  excellent  vaca- 
tion employment  for  some  people,  but  I  suspect 
there  is  an  economic  warrant  for  the  disposition 

66 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

of  the  common  run  of  American  adults  to  in- 
trust the  transaction  of  their  active  sports  to 
persons  who  can  give  their  whole  time  to  them, 
and  whose  skilful  exertions  it  is  restful  now  and 
then  to  watch. 

I  remember  my  classmate  Hollaway  saying 
one  day  of  a  group  of  sporty  young  gentlemen 
whom  we  were  discussing,  "The  things  that 
seem  to  amuse  them  would  not  give  me  pleas- 
ure." That  was  true.  Hollaway  liked  to 
think.  That  was  the  way  he  had  most  of  his 
fun.  He  was  willing  to  put  in  enough  physical 
exertion  to  make  his  machinery  run  smoothly, 
and  liked,  as  a  rule,  to  do  it  quickly  and  have 
it  over,  but  he  got  his  fun  out  of  what  went  on 
in  his  head,  and  in  talk.  He  practised  and  en- 
joyed all  the  mental  processes,  observation, 
cogitation,  consideration,  reflection,  rumination, 
imagination,  and  the  rest,  with  resulting  and 
accompanying  discourse.  Nobody  around  had 
more  fun  than  Hollaway.  Somebody  said  he 
had  a  "happy  activity  of  the  soul."  Maybe 
that  is  out  of  Emerson.  I'll  ask  Cordelia,  who 
confesses  to  some  acquaintance  with  Emerson. 
But,  anyhow,  the  happy  activity  of  the  soul 
is  good  to  have  and  not  visibly  price-marked 

67 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

nor  denied  necessarily,  like  the  opera  and  polo, 
to  the  impecunious. 

Going  out  to  visit  the  Peytons  was  an  en- 
livening change,  and  gave  us  new  topics  for 
discourse  and  reflection,  but  the  best  of  it  was 
to  talk  about  it  with  Cordelia.  I  like  the 
tranquillity  of  being  married — married,  that  is, 
to  Cordelia.  Visiting  the  Peytons  is  a  bit  of 
embroidery  on  the  fabric  of  life,  but  coming 
home  to  the  flat  and  staying  in  all  the  evening 
and  reading  as  many  of  the  contemporary 
periodicals  as  I  can  manage  to  get  hold  of  and 
get  time  to  explore,  and  talking  to  Cordelia — 
that  is  the  very  web  of  life.  I  seldom  have  the 
sense  of  justification  in  life  so  strongly  as  in 
these  domesticated  discourses  with  Cordelia. 
I  have  got  her  to  reading  the  contemporary 
periodicals  and  the  newspapers  and  keeping 
some  track  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  world. 
I  don't  know  what  kind  of  radicals  we  will  turn 
out  to  be  if  we  keep  our  minds  on  that  diet. 
But  I  get  the  other  point  of  view  down-town, 
where  my  employment  is  largely  to  assist  my 
boss  to  help  gentlemen  with  property  to  adjust 
the  management  of  their  concerns  to  laws  con- 
trived with  intent  to  retard  their  processes  of 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

acquisition.  It  is  nip  and  tuck  in  these  days 
between  the  gentlemen  who  make  the  progres- 
sive political  periodicals  and  the  gentlemen 
who  control  the  railroads  and  banks  and  trusts 
and  their  employees,  to  determine  who  is  going 
to  run  the  country.  As  things  are,  the  country 
is  run,  after  a  fashion.  The  wheels  do  turn,  and 
production  and  distribution  are  accomplished. 
To  be  sure,  the  wheels  screech  more  or  less,  and 
the  production  is  pretty  wasteful  compared  with 
what  the  professional  economists  say  it  might 
be,  and  the  stream  of  distribution  runs  so  lumpy 
that  it  makes  you  laugh;  but  a  fair  proportion 
of  the  Lord's  will  seems  to  be  done,  and  hopeful 
people  calculate  that  the  proportion  is  increas- 
ing, though  you  might  not  always  think  so  to 
read  the  progressive  periodicals.  A  large  part 
of  the  happy  activity  of  nature  consists  of  the 
big  creatures  eating  the  little  ones,  but  we 
complain  awfully  about  it  when  we  think  we 
see  it  going  on  in  human  society,  and  the  law, 
whose  humble  but  aspiring  servant  I  am,  was 
invented  to  check  it.  Everything  that  is  in- 
vented to  check  that  propensity  tends  to  develop 
an  appetite  of  its  own.  The  law,  the  church, 
the  walking  delegate,  all  have  in  them  the  in- 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

gradients  of  voracity,  and  I  dare  say  the  same 
ingredients  are  latent  in  the  progressive  periodi- 
cals. Who  has  the  brains  to  govern  will  gov- 
ern, and  the  mere  substitution  of  lean  masters 
for  fat  ones  is  not  necessarily  an  advantage.  I 
suppose  it  is  largely  our  own  consciousness  of 
that  that  restrains  us  from  taking  the  country 
away  from  the  interests  and  giving  it  to  the 
periodicals;  and  besides,  of  course,  it  is  harder, 
because  the  interests  hang  on  so  to  what  is 
theirs,  and  the  law,  which  is  me,  finds  so  many 
obstacles  to  detaching  them. 

Well,  practising  law  all  day  below  Canal 
Street  in  the  interest  of  the  interests,  and  read- 
ing the  progressive  periodicals  all  the  evening 
— there's  such  a  raft  of  them — in  the  interest  of 
righteousness,  altruism,  and  the  people,  ought 
to  make  me  a  very  broad-minded  person — so 
broad-minded  probably  that  I  shall  lose  sense 
of  direction  and  fetch  up  in  the  driver's  place 
on  a  Brooklyn  street-car. 

And  yet  probably  not,  with  Cordelia  as  a 
partner.  I  have  consulted  her  about  going  to 
the  Assembly.  Not  that  anybody  wants  me 
to  go  there,  but  it  looks  interesting.  I  wish  my 
boss  would  employ  me  to  go  there  and  see  that 

70 


COMMODITIES  AND  CONTENTMENT 

I  did  not  starve.  But  he  couldn't  very  well. 
I  would  be  a  legislator  in  the  employ  of  an 
employee  of  the  interests,  and  all  the  fun  would 
be  gone.  Father  and  Father-in-law  might  fi- 
nance me,  but  neither  of  them  is  that  much  of 
a  patriot.  If  I  were  employed  by  one  of  the 
periodicals  there  would  be  less  scandal  in  that, 
but  that's  not  a  practical  thought.  I  dare  say 
that  I  shall  have  to  make  considerably  more 
progress  in  the  practice  of  my  profession  before 
I  can  go  to  Albany,  and  by  that  time  I  shall 
have  become  too  valuable  to  myself  and  de- 
pendent associates  to  be  spared  to  go  there. 
After  all,  I  got  married,  and  I  suppose  that  is 
as  fatal  an  indiscretion  as  a  person  of  my  at- 
tenuated means  should  permit  himself  at  this 
stage  of  his  endeavors.  It  is  about  politics 
very  much  as  it  is  about  getting  married — if 
you  wait  till  you're  ready,  you  can't.  It  seems 
as  if  everything  had  to  be  shot  on  the  wing. 
We  ought  to  be  governed  by  people  of  inde- 
pendent means.  They  are  the  only  people  who 
can  afford  the  employment.  But  most  people 
who  have  independent  means  have  a  point  of 
view  to  match,  and  there  you  are — it  isn't  quite 
the  point  of  view  of  a  large  proportion  of  the 

6  71 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

governed.  Just  so  contradictory  things  are, 
and  yet,  after  all,  it's  that  that  makes  the 
game. 

My,  my!  We  have  been  married  nearly  a 
year,  and  have  not  yet  repented.  Our  cir- 
cumstances improve  ar  little  from  month  to 
month.  Besides  The  Firm's  regular  contri- 
bution to  my  maintenance,  I  pick  up  odd  jobs 
now  and  then  on  my  own  account.  Father  and 
Father-in-law  take  occasional  chances  in  the 
lottery  of  my  accomplishments  by  sending  me 
bits  of  business,  and  I  pick  up  other  bits  from 
other  people.  I  have  even  made  literary  com- 
positions, and  tried,  not  always  fruitlessly,  to 
sell  them.  That  is  a  good  enough  game,  if  one 
dared  give  himself  to  it,  but,  except  as  com- 
pounded with  politics,  economics,  or  public 
service  of  some  sort,  it  leads  away  from  law, 
so  I  don't  follow  it  hard. 


IV 

THE  BABY 

T  TNDOUBTEDLY  the  baby  makes  a  great 
\^J  difference.  He  fills  up  the  flat,  for  one 
thing.  I  foresee  that  he  will  turn  us  out  of  it. 
Nevertheless  he  is  valuable,  and  probably  worth 
his  space  even  in  New  York.  His  name  is 
Samuel  French.  Cordelia  named  him  after 
her  father.  She  is  extremely  pleased  with  him. 
So  is  Matilda  Finn,  so  is  my  mother,  so  is  my 
mother-in-law.  Even  the  trained  assistant  to 
nature  who  was  here  to  welcome  him  seemed 
very  pleased  to  meet  Samuel,  and  both  his 
grandfathers  have  been  around  to  inspect  him, 
and  have  approved  and  duly  benefacted  him. 
Neither  of  these  aged  but  still  profitable  men 
has  had  a  grandchild  before,  and  they  seem  to 
like  it.  As  for  me,  naturally  I  am  like  to  burst 
with  the  pride  at  being  associated,  however 
humbly,  with  an  achievement  so  important. 

73 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

Father-in-law  is  building  a  new  room  on  to  his 
summer  palace  in  Connecticut,  with  a  view,  I 
think,  to  the  more  convenient  entertainment 
of  his  new  descendant,  and  I  think  that  noth- 
ing but  consideration  for  my  fiscal  incapacity 
withholds  him  from  building  Cordelia  a  country 
house.  By  various  expedients  I  have  swelled 
our  sixty  dollars  a  week  to  about  seventy, 
which  is  a  grateful  gain,  and  appreciable  in 
spite  of  the  demands  of  the  Post-office,  the 
public  transportation  companies,  the  market- 
men,  and  the  other  agencies  of  depletion,  so 
corroding  to  the  fiscal  being;  but  even  —  let 
me  see,  seven  times  fifty-two  weeks — but  even 
$3,640  is  not  an  annual  income  that  seems  equal 
to  the  maintenance  of  two  residences.  I  guess 
if  we  are  to  have  a  suburban  home  it  must  be 
an  all-the-year-round  home  for  the  present, 
and  father-in-law's  place  in  Connecticut  is  not 
just  the  right  place  for  that.  It  is  some  miles 
from  the  station,  and  involves  maintenance  of 
horsepower  of  some  sort,  and  of  course  that  is 
unspeakable  except  as  father-in-law  provides 
it.  Our  lay  would  be  a  villa  about  the  length 
of  a  baseball  ground  from  the  station,  or, 
better  still,  something  five  cents  from  Wall 

74 


THE  BABY 

Street  by  tunnel  or  trolley,  and  you  catch  the 
car  on  the  next  corner. 

But  think  of  the  crowd  on  the  car! 

No,  I  won't  think  of  it.  It  is  the  common 
lot  hereabouts,  and  I  should  be  able  to  stand 
my  share  of  it,  which  I  would  not  get  in  full, 
anyhow,  because,  being  a  lawyer,  I  can  leave 
home  a  little  later,  and  leave  for  home  usually 
a  little  earlier  or  later  than  the  great  body  of 
the  workers  for  a  living. 

My  new  responsibility  has  brought  me  a 
variety  of  new  appreciations.  As  a  parent  I 
find  I  have  new  sentiments  about  parents,  and 
increased  esteem  and  regard  for  them  as  pillars 
that  uphold  life  and  direct  it.  Beyond  doubt, 
they  are  fine  for  upholding  grandchildren.  No 
doubt  there  would  be  considerably  more  grand- 
children in  our  world  if  there  were  more  grand- 
parents who  recognized  their  responsibilities 
and  made  provision,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to 
meet  them.  But  that  does  not  accord  with  the 
lively  individualism  of  our  generation.  Not 
only  are  we  all  desirous  of  independent  life,  but 
our  parents  prefer  it  for  us.  Accordingly,  when 
we  get  above  the  social  plane  in  which  inde- 
pendent life  for  man  and  wife  can  be  main- 

75 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

tained  for  twenty  dollars  a  week,  marriage  is 
apt  to  come  late.  There  are  immense  advan- 
tages about  that  social  plane  in  which  twenty 
dollars  a  week  is  a  complete  living,  and  the  wife 
is  cook  and  housemaid,  wife,  mother,  and  nurse 
all  in  one,  and  the  state  provides  education,  and 
the  doctor  adjusts  his  charges  to  your  income, 
and  all  the  man  has  to  look  after  is  food,  clothes, 
shelter,  and  pocket  money!  I  hope  the  people 
who  are  born  with  a  call  on  that  phase  of  exist- 
ence appreciate  their  luck.  To  rise  to  the 
twenty-dollar-a-week  phase  must  be  full  of 
satisfactions,  but  to  drop  to  it  is  quite  another 
matter.  Whatever  starting-point  is  dealt  out 
to  us,  it  is  from  that  point  that  we  have  to  go 
on,  and,  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  the  point 
at  which  it  behooves  us  to  arrive  is  measured 
from  the  point  at  which  we  start. 

Raising  babies  must  have  been  very  much 
simplified  by  the  invention  of  the  kodak.  There 
is  no  attitude,  expression,  sentiment,  costume, 
or  absence  of  costume  of  Samuel  that  this  handy 
little  instrument  has  not  perpetuated.  And 
inasmuch  as  Samuel  varies  and  progresses  from 
hour  to  hour,  acquiring  personality,  weight,  and 
accomplishments,  changing  in  his  features  and 

76 


THE  BABY 

developing  new  resemblances,  the  click  of  the 
kodak  is  almost  as  frequent  in  our  flat  as  the 
whir  of  the  sewing-machine.  When  infants 
had  to  run  to  the  photographer's  for  every  new 
picture,  I  don't  see  how  they  got  then*  natural 
rest.  You  know  they  sleep  about  eighteen 
hours  a  day.  One  would  think  that  with  all 
that  somnolence  a  baby  would  be  no  more 
trouble  than  a  dormouse,  but  Samuel  is  almost 
a  complete  occupation.  As  an  example  of 
woman's  work  he  qualifies  by  being  never  done. 
When  he  is  asleep  he  is  about  to  waken,  and 
when  he  is  awake  he  is  about  to  sleep,  and  either 
way  he  is  either  taking  nourishment  or  about  to 
take  it,  or  taking  a  bath,  or  changing  his  clothes, 
or  acquiring  ideas,  or  taking  first  lessons  in  lan- 
guage. Since  I  have  known  him  I  sympathize 
with  the  woman  who  thought  it  just  as  easy 
to  raise  six  children  as  one,  because  one  took 
up  all  your  time,  and  six  couldn't  do  more. 

I  never  saw  Cordelia  so  much  amused  with 
anything,  and  I  admit  to  being,  myself,  more 
diverted  and  entertained  than  I  should  have 
thought  possible.  I  had  a  puppy  once  that  was 
a  delight,  so  cheerful,  so  prodigal  of  affection- 
ate welcomes,  and  so  incessant  in  his  activities. 

77 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

Mother  has  got  him  now.  She  appropriated 
him — or  he  her — and  kept  him,  she  said,  to 
remind  her  of  me.  But  Samuel  beats  the 
puppy.  He  does  not  get  around  as  briskly  yet 
as  the  puppy  did,  but  he  has  the  same  delight 
in  very  simple  toys,  and  a  similar  liveliness  of 
mind,  and  a  like  capacity  to  be  pleased.  He  is 
quite  a  lot  like  that  puppy  as  he  was  when  I 
first  got  him. 

I  didn't  need  anything  to  increase  my  in- 
terest in  getting  home  at  night.  Cordelia  at- 
tended to  that.  But  Samuel  has  increased  it. 
He  is  awake  when  I  get  home,  and,  though  he 
is  usually  getting  ready  to  go  to  bed,  he  always 
expresses  a  flattering  satisfaction  at  meeting 
me  again,  and  has  interesting  details  of  progress 
to  report,  and  smiles,  and  puts  out  arms,  and 
makes  inarticulate  noises,  and  sits  in  my  lap, 
and  makes  an  inventory  of  my  accessible 
properties. 

And,  of  course,  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be 
told  about  him,  including  the  day's  report  of 
what  has  been  said  of  him  by  admiring  friends, 
and  of  the  visits  he  has  made  and  received, 
and,  now  and  then,  statistics  of  his  weight  and 
progress  in  intelligence  and  activity.  I  think 

78 


THE    BABY 

Cordelia  talks  to  Matilda  Finn  and  her  various 
visitors  about  him  all  day,  and  then  to  me 
about  him  most  of  the  evening.  It  is  surprising 
that  so  small  a  carcass  should  afford  so  much 
discourse. 

We  have  entered  him  at  a  suitable  school, 
which  is  perhaps  another  token  of  the  incom- 
pleteness of  my  emancipation.  You  know 
that  for  some  years  past  some  of  the  boarding- 
schools  have  been  so  highly  esteemed,  for  one 
reason  or  another,  by  unemancipated  parents 
that  they  have  coveted  the  privilege  of  having 
their  sons  go  to  them,  and,  to  insure  getting  it, 
have  entered  their  boys'  names  at  those  schools 
as  soon  as  they  were  born.  So  I  entered  Samuel 
at  the  school  where  I  went  myself.  If  that 
implied  incompleteness  of  emancipation  in  me, 
I  don't  care.  Samuel  must  have  his  chance. 
It  is  enough  for  me  to  be  emancipated.  Eman- 
cipation is  a  personal  affair,  like  conversion, 
and  no  one  ought  to  try  to  force  his  emancipa- 
tion on  any  one  else,  least  of  all  a  parent  on  a 
child.  Samuel  may  prefer  the  old  order,  and 
by  the  time  he  grows  up  we  may  have  the 
wherewithal  to  enable  him  to  experiment  with 
it  if  there  is  any  of  it  left.  I  don't  know  that 

79 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

there  will  be,  and,  to  be  sure,  when  did  life 
offer  a  bigger  or  more  uncertain  speculation 
than  this  that  Samuel  yawns  and  gapes  in  the 
face  of?  Perhaps  I  ought  not  to  call  it  un- 
certain, except  as  to  times  and  means  and  de- 
tails, but  that's  enough;  and  as  to  those  the 
uncertainty  is  ample.  The  great  task  that  is 
doing  now  seems  to  be  the  improvement  of  the 
common  lot.  No  doubt  that  is  always  going 
on  when  civilization  is  in  its  forward  moods, 
but  nowadays  there  is  uncommon  urgency  about 
it,  and  remarkable  command  and  handling  of 
the  progressive  forces,  and  apparent  enfeeble- 
ment  of  the  powers  of  resistance.  It  is  very 
attractive,  very  hopeful,  but  I  suppose  no 
thoughtful  person  denies  that  it  is  possible  to 
improve  the  common  lot  so  much  and  so  fast 
as  to  force  society  into  the  hands  of  a  receiver. 
That  is  one  possibility  that  little  Samuel  is  up 
against,  and  for  that  matter  so  are  his  parents; 
for  the  receivership  may  come,  and  reorganiza- 
tion after  it,  before  Samuel  is  old  enough  to  sit 
into  the  game. 

My!  my!  what  will  you  see,  little  son?  All 
the  women  voting,  all  the  trades-unions  joined 
under  a  single  head,  armies  abolished,  the  im- 

80 


THE    BABY 

mediate  will  of  majorities  the  supreme  and  only 
law,  detachable  marriage,  detachable  judges, 
detachable  constitutions? 

You  may,  you  may;  and  so  may  your  parents, 
for  that  matter,  and  are  as  likely  to,  perhaps, 
as  you  are.  But  stay  with  us,  none  the  less. 
There  seems  always  to  be  good  sport  in  this 
world  for  good  sports — no  matter  what  may 
be  going  on.  Folks  lived,  and  liked  to  live, 
hereabouts  when  the  men  walked  between 
plow-handles  with  a  rifle  across  their  shoulders, 
and  they  can  stand  considerable  variations  in 
public  habits  without  losing  the  appetite  for 
life.  An  unchanging  order  is  bound  to  grow 
tiresome,  always  did,  always  will;  though  out- 
side of  China  it  is  hard  to  find  one,  and  even 
there  the  old  order  is  moving  now.  We  must  try 
to  make  a  good  sport  of  Samuel;  one  who  will 
be  interested  in  life  no  matter  what,  and,  when 
new  rules  are  making,  have  a  say  about  them. 

I  don't  see  why  I  hang  back  so  about  votes 
for  women.  At  times  I  think  I  am  not  op- 
posed. I  think  I  don't  care.  But  I  read  all 
the  opposed  discourse  that  has  any  sense  in  it 
with  sympathy,  and  all  the  pro  discourse  in  a 
critical  spirit,  rejoicing  when  it  seems  to  me 

81 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

unsound.  It  is  true  enough  that  there  is  no 
compelling  reason  why  I  should  want  votes 
for  women.  My  proprietors  don't  want  them. 
Mother  sniffs  at  them.  Cordelia  is  observant, 
with  very  much  such  an  instinctive  leaning 
toward  the  antis  as  I  have.  Why  should  I 
excite  myself  about  "equal  suffrage"  when  my 
ladies  like  things  better  as  they  are?  Aren't 
mother  and  Cordelia  representative  women? 
A  great  deal  more  so,  I  think,  than  most  of  the 
suffragists.  The  mass  of  women  hereabouts 
don't  seem  to  be  concerned  about  voting.  The 
suffragists  in  agitating  to  make  them  concerned 
seem  to  be  trying  to  create  an  artificial  want. 
They  go  about  to  persuade  women  that  they 
are  oppressed,  and  are  rated  politically  with  in- 
sane persons,  criminals,  and  aliens. 

Now,  what  is  all  that?  Is  it  progress,  or  is 
it  mischief?  Is  it  based  on  a  mistaken  concep- 
tion of  women's  job,  or  is  it  a  natural  detail  of 
the  redistribution  of  powers  and  privileges  that 
appears  to  be  going  on?  Am  I  opposed  because 
I  am  a  pig  and  a  stand-patter  and  an  old  fogy? 
Are  votes  worth  so  much  fuss,  anyhow,  and  is 
it  going  to  make  any  vital  difference  whether 
American  women  have  them  or  not? 


THE  BABY 

I  don't  know  that  it  is.  The  women  and  the 
men  are  so  inextricably  bound  together  that  it 
is  inconceivable  that  with  woman  suffrage  the 
vote  should  divide  in  proportions  materially 
different  from  what  happens  now.  But  that's 
not  a  reason  for  letting  suffrage  come.  I  do 
think  that  at  present  men  and  women  do  not 
long  work  together  on  the  same  level  at  the 
same  tasks.  Where  women  come  in  either 
they  work  under  the  direction  of  men  or  the 
men  go  out.  The  departments  of  life  in  which 
they  rule — and  there  are  plenty  of  them — are 
those  in  which  men  do  not  compete.  I  don't 
think  they  can  compete  with  men  as  voters  or 
as  organizers  and  directors  of  political  govern- 
ment. If  the  suffragists  get  their  votes  for 
women,  they  will  get  an  enlarged  electorate 
controlled  by  men  as  now.  And  why  should  it 
be  expected  that  the  controlling  men  in  that 
case  will  be  better  than  they  are  now?  Are 
the  mass  of  women  wiser,  more  honest,  and  bet- 
ter judges  of  men  than  the  mass  of  men?  I 
don't  think  so.  I  think  men  and  women  are 
just  mates.  There  seems  to  be  a  woman  to 
match  every  man,  but  different  from  him,  and 
a  man  to  match  almost  every  woman.  It  is 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

not  sensible  to  compare  a  superior  woman  with 
an  ordinary  or  inferior  man,  and  point  out  that 
she  is  fitter  to  vote  than  he  is.  Of  course  she 
is,  but  that  does  not  touch  the  real  question, 
which  is  whether  government  will  be  better 
conducted  with  votes  for  all  women  than  it  is 
now. 

Those  agitators  talk  about  the  "injustice" 
of  depriving  women  of  the  ballot.  They  might 
as  well  talk  of  the  injustice  of  the  refusal  of 
water  to  run  uphill.  There's  no  injustice  about 
it.  It  is  nature.  If  it  can  be  bettered,  all  right. 
Water  will  run  uphill  if  there  is  enough  pressure 
behind  it.  But  if  injustice  has  been  done 
woman  about  her  vote,  it  was  done  when  she 
was  born  female  and  not  male,  and  the  appeal 
from  that  lies  to  the  higher  court. 

Was  there  any  done?  Take  it  by  and  large, 
is  it  a  misfortune  to  born  a  girl  and  not  a  boy? 
That  may  happen  to  any  of  us  any  time  we 
happen  to  be  born.  It's  a  toss-up.  It's  not 
the  slightest  credit  to  us  to  be  born  male,  and 
certainly  it  should  not  be  the  slightest  discredit 
to  us  to  be  born  female;  but  according  as  we 
are  born  male  or  female  we  are  born  to  different 
duties.  If  political  government  is  one  of  the 

84 


THE  BABY 

male  duties,  civilization  will  not  get  ahead  by 
having  men  loosen  their  hold  on  it.  For  my 
part  I  suppose  that  down  in  the  intricacies  of 
my  composition  I  have  an  instinctive  convic- 
tion, or  hunch,  that  political  government  is  a 
male  attribute,  and  that  out  of  that  comes  my 
objection  to  abdicate,  or  even  dilute,  my  share 
of  it.  Instinctive  convictions  have  great  weight 
in  these  matters,  though  the  surface  arguments 
they  put  out  may  be  inadequate  or  mistaken, 
as  the  anti-suffrage  arguments  are  so  apt  to  be. 
The  suffragist  expounders  demolish  them,  and 
think  that  they  have  accomplished  something; 
but,  alas!  the  demolition  of  puerile  arguments 
leaves  the  question  just  where  it  was,  with  the 
pith  of  it  still  untouched.  Still  I  think  the 
agitation  does  good,  bothering  people  like  me, 
and  making  us  think;  asking  us,  What  does  be- 
long to  women,  then,  if  not  votes?  How  else 
are  you  going  to  give  them  equal  life?  What 
does  justice  demand  for  them  if  not  the  suffrage? 
If  the  males  since  the  beginning  of  time  have 
overestimated  their  importance  and  erred  in 
regarding  themselves  as  specialists  in  govern- 
ment, then  it  is  only  a  matter  of  time  when  we 
shall  be  disabused  of  that  error  and  shaken 

85 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

down  into  our  rightful  places.  But  if  govern- 
ment— meaning  political  government  rather 
than  domestic — really  prospers  better  in  the 
long  run  in  the  hands  of  males,  in  their  hands 
it  is  likely  to  stay — the  substance  of  it  certainly, 
however  that  shadow  we  call  a  vote  may  flutter 
off,  and  wherever  it  may  alight. 

Nothing  happens  without  a  cause.  If  the 
men  are  to  be  abased,  doubtless  it  will  be  for 
their  abundant  sins.  If  they  will  not  work  as 
men  should,  they  will  lose  their  jobs.  If  they 
will  not  govern  as  men  should,  they  will  be 
governed.  History  is  a  record  of  the  strong 
races  subduing  the  weak,  and  the  wise  the  fool- 
ish, to  the  end  that  strength  and  wisdom  shall 
prevail  in  human  affairs.  In  these  days  of 
Monroe  doctrines  and  alliances  and  arbitration 
treaties  those  harsh  processes  seem  to  have 
been  superseded.  Is  this  invasion  by  women 
of  the  province  of  men  a  new  expedient  of 
Nature  to  preserve  the  competition  that  is 
essential  to  human  progress? 

We  cannot  beat  Nature.  She  is  obdurate, 
resourceful,  impossible  to  fool,  with  a  trick  to 
meet  every  trick  that  is  offered  her.  She  seems 
determined  that  man  shall  come  to  something 

86 


THE  BABY 

and  plays  man  against  man  to  make  him  better 
himself,  and  is  probably  equal,  if  occasion  de- 
mands it,  to  play  one  half  of  him  against  the 
other.  For  of  course  that  is  what  woman  is — 
the  other  half  of  man.  There  cannot  be  a  real 
competition  between  the  two  halves,  for  they 
are  inseparably  joined  and  have  to  pull  each 
other  along.  But  for  all  that,  they  are  distinct 
individuals,  and  one  in  a  given  period  may 
make  faster  progress  than  the  other,  with  a 
good  deal  of  disturbance  of  relations  and  equities 
and  ideas.  What  man  gets,  woman  gets;  what 
woman  gets,  man  gets.  When  woman  gets 
education,  liberty,  opportunity,  protection,  the 
whole  race  gets  those  benefits. 

Then  shall  we  say  that  when  woman  gets  the 
vote  the  race  is  that  much  ahead?  It  may  be, 
but  to  me  it  has  not  been  so  revealed  up  to 
these  presents.  Who  gave  man  strength  gave 
him  dominion.  If  he  loses  dominion  it  will  be 
because  he  has  either  misused  his  strength  or 
lost  it. 

Samuel  has  not  lost  his.  He  is  truly  a  great 
power.  As  I  have  said,  he  is  almost  a  complete 
occupation  for  his  mother,  and  a  profitable, 
satisfying  occupation,  too.  I  confess  to  fears 

7  87 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

in  time  past  that  girls  of  Cordelia's  sort  did 
not  have  enough  to  do  to  bring  them  their 
proper  growth  and  keep  them  happy.  If  they 
didn't  go  to  college  and  didn't  marry  as  soon 
as  they  got  out  of  school,  they  seemed  to  drift 
into  a  lot  of  occupations  that  looked  rather 
futile,  and  like  a  mere  provision  for  killing  time. 
They  played  around,  they  visited,  they  dabbled 
in  anything  that  came  handy — dances,  charities, 
house-parties,  art,  music,  extra  improvements 
for  the  mind — anything  that  could  be  cast  into 
a  void  of  time  which  should  have  ached,  and 
doubtless  did.  It  used  to  make  me  sorry  for 
the  girls  because  it  seemed  so  hard  for  them  to 
buckle  down  to  anything  remunerative  and 
continuous  and  really  get  ahead  in  it.  If  they 
did  that,  they  forfeited  too  many  opportunities 
of  the  leisure  class,  to  which  it  seems  to  be  in- 
tended that  the  daughters  of  the  well-to-do, 
from  nineteen  to  about  twenty-three,  shall  be- 
long. If  they  went  to  college,  that  solved  the 
problem  for  those  years,  but  it  came  back  at 
them  as  soon  as  they  came  out.  If  they  were 
satisfied  with  their  indefinite  employments  it 
was  bad,  and  if  they  were  not  it  was  also  bad. 
So  I  used  to  feel  sorry  for  the  girls  because 

88 


THE  BABY 

their  job  looked  to  me  so  vague,  and  their 
employments  so  fragmentary  and  unprom- 
ising. 

I  dare  say  I  was  wrong,  and  that  the  girls 
were  working  more  hours  at  their  proper  voca- 
tion than  I  had  the  wit  to  recognize.  I  see  it 
more  clearly  now;  that  there  are  fruits  that 
ripen  best  in  the  sun,  and  should  not  be  hurried 
in  the  process;  that  Cordelia  did  not  really 
waste  those  years  in  which  she  waited  for  me 
to  get  started  as  a  wage-earner,  but  learned  in 
them  a  kind  of  patience  and  useful  domestica- 
tion, besides  other  accomplishments  that  make 
her  better  to  live  with  now. 

Major  Brace  has  paid  us  the  compliment 
to  look  in  and  inspect  Samuel.  He  expressed 
himself  as  pleased  with  him,  and  was  very 
gratifying  in  the  warmth  of  his  congratulations 
to  Cordelia  and  me.  Speaking  as  a  father  of 
almost  complete  experience,  he  told  me  of  the 
special  enthusiasm  he  felt  for  a  child  that  had 
never  run  up  a  dentist's  bill.  Samuel  hasn't. 
There  is  little  or  nothing  about  him  as  yet  that 
would  interest  a  dentist;  but  Cordelia,  whose 
forefinger  is  a  good  deal  in  his  mouth,  says 
there  may  be  any  minute. 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

I  must  ask  mother  if  that  is  so.  No  doubt 
Cordelia's  enthusiasm  is  liable  to  mislead  her. 

I  believe  Cordelia  dislikes  to  spend  money. 
I  find  her  perpetually  weighing  something  that 
might  be  had  against  its  price,  and  deciding  not 
to  have  it.  Unless  the  purchasable  object  is 
indispensable  or  very  positively  desirable — like 
a  kodak  to  snap  at  Samuel — the  money  looks 
better  to  her.  That's  remarkable,  isn't  it? 
People  differ  in  temperament  as  well  as  in 
training  about  that,  inheriting  tighter  or  looser 
fists,  I  suppose,  according  to  the  forebear  they 
individually  trace  back  to.  To  me,  now,  things 
that  I  want  always  look  better  than  what  money 
I  have.  It  makes  me  unhappy  to  spend  much 
more  than  I  have,  but  I  enjoy  very  much 
spending  what  I  have  got.  I  never  have  any 
money  ahead,  unless  you  can  see  savings  in 
life  insurance,  to  which  I  make  some  inade- 
quate pretense.  Maybe  that  is  a  defect  in  my 
character,  though  accumulation  on  seventy  dol- 
lars a  week  has  its  reluctances  when  you  have 
a  wife  and  baby  and  a  cook  and  flat  and  all 
that.  Still,  if  I  had  no  elders  to  fall  back  on 
I'd  have  to  pinch  some  salvage  out  of  every 
dollar. 

90 


THE  BABY 

But  Cordelia  is  naturally  more  retentive  than 
I  am.  It  is  remarkable  how  little  she  cares, 
relatively,  for  things.  She  has  a  good  many 
things,  and  has  always  been  used  to  them.  She 
likes  them,  but  with  an  interest  that  is  alto- 
gether secondary,  preferring  power,  indepen- 
dence, and  tranquillity  of  mind  to  objects  of 
convenience  or  embellishment,  and  to  almost 
everything  else  except  health  and  an  easy  con- 
science. She  has  a  private  fortune — I  don't 
know  that  I  have  mentioned  that — not  large, 
but  yielding  sufficient  income  to  buy  her  clothes. 
All  girls  ought  to  have  private  fortunes.  Small 
ones  will  do:  do  better,  perhaps,  than  larger 
ones,  for  I  don't  suppose  it  is  quite  ideal  to  be 
swamped  by  your  wife's  money.  Cordelia  gets 
a  great  deal  of  comfort  out  of  hers,  but  I  see 
her  basis  of  expenditure  is  different  from  mine. 
Mine  is  adjusted  to  what  I  have;  hers  to  what, 
on  due  reflection,  she  would  rather  have  than 
money.  On  that  basis  she  spends  not  only  her 
own  money,  but  mine.  I  dare  say  she  will  be 
a  rich  woman  some  day,  and,  I  hope,  still  mar- 
ried to  me;  so  there  is  a  chance  that,  with  other 
good  luck,  I  may  gather  some  surplus  too.  I 
believe  she  dislikes  to  shop;  indeed,  I  have  heard 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

her  say  so.  There  is  a  streak  of  Scotch  in  the 
Frenches,  and  I  dare  say  it  happened  her  way. 
My!  my!  What  luck!  When  you  think  of 
the  women — and  men  too,  but  especially  women 
— whose  highest  happiness  is  to  buy  things  and 
lug  them  home,  it  seems  a  marvelous  dispensa- 
tion that  I  should  have  acquired  a  companion 
of  so  opposite  a  sort.  To  be  sure,  no  girl  that 
was  infatuated  with  the  joys  of  purchase  would 
have  thought  twice  of  me;  and  yet,  who  can 
tell,  for  I  suppose  there  are  girls  who  have 
neither  self-restraint  nor  self-denial  about  any- 
thing, and  are  liable  to  think  they  must  have 
something  that  really  would  not  suit  them  at 
all?  I  have  always  thought  that  Rosamond 
Vincy  in  Middlemarck  was  the  most  fatal  char- 
acter in  literature.  What  must  it  be  to  be 
money-grubber  for  a  woman  like  that,  with  an 
expensive  appreciation  of  the  material  side  of 
life  and  no  conception  of  the  rest  of  it!  Stars 
above!  how  much  better  it  is  to  be  lucky  than 
wise,  especially  in  youth,  when,  as  Major  Brace 
assures  me,  none  of  us  know  anything.  There 
was  Solomon,  who  wrote  the  Proverbs,  and 
Ben  Franklin,  who  wrote  Poor  Richard;  both 
able  to  make  shrewd  discourse  by  the  ream, 


THE  BABY 

and  neither  of  them  fortunate  on  the  domestic 
side.  Probably  it  does  not  accord  with  the 
economy  of  nature  that  wise  men  should  have 
wise  wives;  certainly  if  there  is  a  scheme  of 
things  that  is  worthy  of  respect,  it  would  not 
have  fitted  into  it  for  me  to  have  a  foolish  one. 


A   CONTRIBUTION  FROM  MAJOR   BRACE 

1  REMARK  the  disposition  of  contempo- 
rary American  families  to  regulate  their 
church-going  by  the  inclination  of  the  ladies. 
I  suppose  it  will  soon  happen  that  Cordelia 
and  I  will  go  to  church  when  Cordelia  feels  it 
to  be  desirable,  and  that  when  she  stays  at 
home  it  will  look  more  profitable  to  me  to  stay 
at  home  with  her.  Although  that  means  that 
we  will  go  pretty  regularly,  it  is  not  quite  as  it 
should  be,  any  more  than  that  I  should  go  with- 
out my  dinner  when  she  has  a  failure  of  the 
appetite.  But  it  seems  apt  to  be  so  with  con- 
temporary Protestant  people  who  get  married. 
Even  if  the  male  has  a  previous  habit  of  church- 
going,  and  convictions  or  preferences  in  favor 
of  it,  the  woman  is  apt  to  be  captain  in  that 
particular,  and  to  assume  command  of  the 
family  conscience.  That  is  an  item  in  the  con- 
temporary slump  of  the  male  in  the  business  of 

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A  CONTRIBUTION   FROM  MAJOR   BRACE 

directing  the  course  of  life.  He  tries  to  keep  a 
hand  of  his  own  on  politics,  but  in  the  concerns 
of  religion  easily  falls  into  the  practice  of  look- 
ing to  the  woman  to  make  his  decisions  and  re- 
mind him  of  his  practices.  Which  is  feeble  of 
him,  for,  as  between  religion  and  politics,  re- 
ligion is  decidedly  the  more  important,  for  it 
shapes  and  inspires  and  regulates  the  whole 
of  life,  politics  included,  whereas  politics  is  no 
more  than  a  detail. 

When  I  think  of  women  and  their  needs  and 
powers  and  rights,  and  their  office  in  life — as  I 
do  a  great  deal  nowadays,  with  Cordelia  to  ob- 
serve and  those  suffragists  prodding  at  the  sub- 
ject all  the  time — I  have  bursts  of  momentary 
conviction  to  the  effect  that  if  women  go  on 
assimilating  four-fifths  of  the  available  religion 
and  leaving  nine-tenths  of  the  alcohol  and  nearly 
all  the  tobacco  to  the  men,  they  will  govern 
our  world  before  we  know  it.  The  Turks  under- 
stand better.  The  male  Turks  make  a  specialty 
of  piety,  go  without  rum,  and  share  tobacco 
liberally  with  their  women;  so  to  be  a  male 
Turk  is  still  a  relatively  powerful  condition, 
though  I  understand  the  Turkish  ladies  are 
restless  nowadays,  in  spite  of  sweetmeats  and 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

cigarettes,  and  are  covetous  of  education,  and 
suspect  that  there  should  be  more  coming  to 
them  than  they  are  getting. 

Cordelia  has  intimated  that  that  observation 
of  mine  about  men  having  strength,  and  there- 
fore dominion,  is  something  of  a  bluff.  She  is 
too  polite  to  contradict  it,  but  not  too  polite 
to  stir  me  to  further  reflections  about  it.  Are 
men  stronger?  Have  they  dominion? 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  average  man  we 
see  about  can  hit  harder  than  the  average 
woman.  He  can  also  run  faster  and  make 
better  time  up  a  tree,  so  that  he  seems  to  have 
the  best  of  it,  physically,  both  in  offense  and 
escape.  If  you  come  to  translate  these  powers 
into  practical  contemporary  factors  he  can 
usually  earn  more  money  at  present  than  she 
can,  and  is  much  less  vulnerable  in  the  reputa- 
tion. It  may  be  argued  that  this  superiority 
in  male  abilities  is  not  the  work  of  nature  at 
all,  but  a  consequence  of  male  malignancy  and 
oppression,  and  that  if  woman  had  a  fair  show 
to  get  her  due  development  she  could  stand  up 
to  man  when  he  put  up  his  hooks,  and  run  him 
down  when  he  ran  away.  So  Olive  Schreiner 
seems  to  feel  about  it.  Man's  power  to  make 

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A  CONTRIBUTION   FROM   MAJOR  BRACE 

more  money  than  woman  is  challenged  as  an 
injustice.  Perhaps  it  is  an  injustice  in  many 
cases.  Perhaps  our  industrial  system  is  not 
adjusted  yet  to  women's  undomestic  work  in 
schools  and  factories  and  offices,  and  maybe 
the  payroll  will  be  revised  in  time  in  women's 
favor.  Still  I  think  man's  superior  money- 
making  powers  are  of  a  piece  with  his  power 
to  hit  harder  and  run  faster.  Money-getting 
seems  to  be  more  in  the  line  of  his  natural  job 
than  of  hers.  He  is  less  distracted  from  it  by 
other  leanings  than  she  is.  I  guess  he  will  al- 
ways be  the  head  money-getter,  though  very 
likely  her  claim  on  what  he  gets  may  come  to 
rest  even  more  on  a  basis  of  natural  right  than 
it  does  at  present.  It  is  a  very  much  respected 
claim  as  it  is,  and  supported  by  law  and  senti- 
ment. 

Man  is  superior  in  some  kinds  of  bodily 
strength,  and  apparently  in  some  kinds  of 
mental  strength,  too,  but  does  it  give  him 
dominion?  Some,  I  think.  It  seems  to  give 
him  a  good  deal  of  dominion  among  savages, 
and  less  and  less  as  civilization  increases. 
Probably  it  would  give  him  more  if  he  were 
not  inferior  in  some  of  the  kinds  of  strength, 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

and  in  some  other  respects  that  we  are  not  used 
to  classify  as  strength,  but  which  offset  it. 
There  are  war-powers  and  peace-powers.  Ad- 
mitting, in  spite  of  Kipling's  she-bear  poem, 
that  man's  war-powers  beat  woman's,  how  about 
peace-powers?  Of  course  they  are  enormous. 
If  she  uses  them  for  offense,  she  can  spoil  the 
man's  cake  at  any  time.  There  is  no  living 
without  women,  and  to  be  assigned  to  one  of 
them  and  have  her  contrive  that  there  shall 
be  no  living  with  her  makes  a  serious  dilemma. 
I  have  discussed  this  matter  with  our  old  friend 
Major  Brace,  and  he  has  illuminated  it  with 
such  wisdom  as  his  great  age  (as  he  says)  has 
enabled  him  to  supply.  "  We  can't  do  anything, 
Peregrine,"  he  said,  "but  try  our  utmost  [of 
course  he  really  said  damnedest]  to  make  them 
happy,  and  hope  that  they  will  be  good."  He 
told  me  a  story  about  a  house-painter  he  once 
knew  in  the  country  who  had  some  ferrets. 
"I  noticed  when  looking  at  the  ferrets,"  the 
Major  said,  "that  he  had  a  padlock  on  the 
place  where  he  kept  them,  and  he  let  me  know, 
somehow,  that  he  carried  the  key  in  his  pocket 
and  let  nobody  but  himself  meddle  with  them. 
I  took  note  of  that,  because  it  seemed  to  me 


A   CONTRIBUTION   FROM   MAJOR   BRACE 

that  the  ferrets  being  part  of  the  domestic 
establishment,  the  natural  way  would  have 
been  to  leave  the  key  in  the  house  when  he  was 
away  and  intrust  the  ferrets  to  his  wife.  But 
that  was  not  his  way,  and  I  set  him  down  in 
my  mind  as  a  believer  in  male  dominion  and 
an  upholder  of  the  authority  of  the  head  of  the 
house.  And,  accordingly,  when  I  heard  about 
a  year  later  that  his  wife  had  eloped  with  the 
butcher  I  wasn't  at  all  surprised.  No  doubt  he 
had  felt  about  her  as  he  had  about  the  ferrets 
— that  she  was  his  property.  I  heard  that  he 
was  extremely  put  out  when  she  ran  away,  and 
took  it  so  much  to  heart  that  he  left  the  vil- 
lage. I  suppose  he  didn't  know  any  better, 
though  of  course  it  is  possible  that  the  woman 
was  a  fool  and  couldn't  be  trusted.  Her  going 
off  with  the  butcher  implies  a  certain  careless- 
ness, though  not  necessarily  a  lack  of  intelli- 
gence. 

"You  see,  Peregrine,  one  measure  of  the  lib- 
erty of  women  is  the  intelligence  of  man.  And 
it  works  the  other  way  round,  too.  A  man  who 
is  intelligent  enough  to  prefer  a  free  woman  for 
his  companion  will  plan  and  take  thought  to 
have  one;  and  a  woman  who  is  clever  enough 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

to  prefer  a  free  man  will  take  thought  to  keep 
her  man  free  and  still  keep  him.  That's  what 
all  decent  people  do  nowadays  who  are  passably 
wise,  and  I  suppose  it  is  what  such  people  have 
been  doing,  not  always,  perhaps,  but  easily 
since  the  time  of  Adam.  And  I  dare  say  the 
better-grade  animals  do  the  like." 

I  asked  the  Major  if  he  thought  Kipling  was 
right  about  the  she-bear  and  the  superior  offen- 
siveness  of  females.  He  said  he  thought  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  meat  in  Kipling's  verses, 
and  that  few  intelligent  men  came  to  be  half 
a  century  old  without  having  had  to  take 
thought  of  the  intensity  of  the  female  disposi- 
tion. "Somehow,  Peregrine,"  said  he,  "they 
seem  to  be  a  little  nearer  nature  than  we  are. 
The  primitive  creature  seems  to  survive  in  them 
a  little  more  perceptibly  than  it  does  in  us. 
And  it  is  a  very  valuable  survival — very  valu- 
able— and  fit  to  receive  the  most  respectful 
consideration,  because,  as  Kipling  intimates,  it 
is  a  factor  in  the  continuation  of  the  race. 
When  a  man  has  a  wise  wife  who  loves  him, 
as  you  and  I  have,  Peregrine,  it  is  his  business 
to  get  the  benefit  of  everything  she  has.  All 
her  strength  as  well  as  his  is  needed  in  their 

100 


A   CONTRIBUTION   FROM   MAJOR   BRACE 

common  business.  If  he  troubles  her  with  his 
limitations,  checks  her  initiative,  and  ignores 
her  dissent,  it  is  as  bad  for  the  common  interest 
as  when  she  does  the  like  to  him.  He  should 
attend  to  her  risings-up  and  her  sittings-down, 
and  when  at  times  the  primitive  creature  rises 
up  in  her,  his  best  procedure  often  is  neither  to 
run  nor  to  try  to  rule  the  storm,  but  to  sit  down 
in  the  sand,  wrap  his  burnoose  around  his  head, 
and  keep  his  face  attentively  to  leeward  until 
the  gale  blows  out  and  calm  re-eventuates. 
Then,  in  due  time,  she  will  dig  him  out  again, 
if  necessary,  and  he  will  have  much  less  to  un- 
say and  repent  of  than  if  he  had  talked  back. 
And  usually,  if  he  has  been  attentive,  he  will 
have  learned  something  that  it  is  valuable  to 
know. 

"Lord  love  us,"  went  on  the  Major,  "I  hate 
subdued  wives.  I  hate  subdued  husbands  also, 
but  subdued  wives  worse,  if  possible,  because 
what  subdues  a  wife  is  usually  such  an  offensive 
combination  of  egotism  and  stupidity.  And 
yet  I  know  quite  able  men  who  bully  their 
wives  and  have  checked  their  wives'  develop- 
ment and  diminished  their  abilities  by  doing 

so.    It  is  a  shocking  waste,  although  it  is  to 
101 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

admire  the  wives  who  bear  it.  That  is  apt  to 
be  the  best  thing  they  can  do,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances. You  see,  in  marriage  that  sug- 
gestion of  Scripture  about  cutting  off  the  right 
hand  that  offends  has  only  limited  application. 
Man  or  woman  of  us,  when  we  have  stood  up 
in  church  and  acquired  a  right  hand  of  the  op- 
posite gender,  we  have  need  to  go  mighty  slow 
about  casting  it  from  us.  To  read  the  divorce 
statistics,  and  about  the  growth  of  that  practice 
in  this  country  in  the  last  twenty  years,  you'd 
think  divorce  was  on  the  way  to  become  a  uni- 
versal habit.  But  I  guess  it  won't.  I  guess 
when  the  ratio  has  reached  a  point  where  it 
provides  duly  for  the  irresponsible,  intemper- 
ate, light-minded,  and  unfortunate,  the  increase 
will  stop,  and  maybe,  if  civilization  improves, 
the  figures  will  begin  to  run  the  other  way. 
That  may  seem  optimistic,  but  I  can't  think 
that  woman's  extraordinary  gift  for  living  with 
man,  and  man's  surprising  talent  for  getting 
along  with  woman,  are  going  to  perish  or  be 
wasted." 

My  coevals  that  I  meet  are  still  talking  about 

football;    not  exclusively,  of  course,  but  with 

102 


A  CONTRIBUTION  FROM  MAJOR  BRACE 

perseverance  and  of  a  lively  appearance  of  in- 
terest. Talking  about  it  has  some  obvious 
advantages  over  playing  it,  but  I  never  learned 
to  be  really  expert  in  either.  Cordelia  and  I 
saved  quantities  of  money  last  fall  staying  away 
from  football  games.  Also  quite  a  lot  in  stay- 
ing away  from  the  great  final  series  in  pro- 
fessional baseball.  Also  time  and  strength  on 
both  of  these  items.  If  our  circumstances  had 
been  four  or  five  times  as  easy  and  Samuel 
could  have  spared  us,  we  would  have  enriched 
our  experience  of  contemporary  life  by  taking 
in  several  of  these  contests.  As  studies  in 
crowdology  they  are  mighty  good  and  leave 
permanent  impressions  behind  them.  And  they 
are  interesting  socially  and  anthropologically. 
And  sometimes  they  are  pretty  good  as  sport — 
the  football  games  better,  I  think,  than  before 
the  rules  were  changed.  But  as  it  was,  it  was 
a  very  easy  economy  for  us.  Cordelia  said  she 
had  been  to  football  games  and  didn't  believe 
there  were  any  important  new  thrills  left  in 
them  for  her;  and  we  read  a  lot  about  them  in 
the  papers  and  were  content,  though  I  don't 
think  football  really  makes  first-class  news- 
paper reading.  I  can't  follow  the  ball  in  type 
8  103 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

even  as  well  as  from  the  seats,  and  I  only  get 
the  score  and  the  spectacular  features.  The 
worst  of  it  is  I  cannot  care  inordinately  who 
wins.  Of  course,  the  players  do.  They  ought 
to.  And  so  should  the  undergraduates  and 
persons  just  emerged  from  that  condition. 
But  I  don't  understand  why  such  large  masses 
of  adult  people  contrive  to  care  so  much — if 
they  really  do — whether  Harvard  beats  Yale, 
or  either  of  them  beats  Princeton,  or  whether 
the  Army  or  the  Navy  wins. 

I  am  getting  deplorably  careless  in  my  feel- 
ings in  this  great  subject.  To  be  sure,  when 
there  is  a  big  game  I  want  to  know  how  it  has 
gone,  and  buy  the  latest  evening  paper  and  take 
it  home  and  assimilate,  and  discuss  a  little,  its 
disclosures  about  what  the  score  was  and  why 
it  was  so.  But  however  it  turns  out  it  doesn't 
affect  my  appetite  for  dinner,  nor  my  interest 
in  food,  and  I  can't  talk  about  it  more  than 
half  an  hour.  And  when  the  Sunday  paper 
comes  with  all  the  details  I  am  apt  to  get  in- 
terested in  other  news  and  skip  the  football 
stories  altogether,  or  until  late  at  night. 

Really,  I  am  ashamed.  It  comes,  no  doubt, 
with  increase  of  years  and  the  pressure  of  re- 

104 


A  CONTRIBUTION  FROM  MAJOR  BRACE 

sponsibilities  and  concern  about  the  more  vital 
details  of  human  existence.  Cordelia  reviles 
me  and  says  I  am  getting  older  than  my  years. 
Maybe  I  am,  mentally,  though  she  is  just  about 
as  much  interested  in  football  as  I  am,  and  no 
more.  I  suppose  sport  naturally  falls  into  a 
secondary  place  in  the  thoughts  of  people  who 
have  a  living  to  make  and  rent  to  pay  and  a 
child  to  raise.  If  everybody  was  like  us,  sport 
might  languish,  and  that  would  be  a  pity.  I'm 
glad  they're  not.  The  Pharisee  was  not  so  far 
out,  perhaps,  in  thanking  God  he  was  not  like 
other  men.  The  trouble  was,  he  did  not  go 
on  and  thank  God  that  other  men  were  not  like 
him.  There  needs  to  be  great  variety  in  the 
world  if  all  the  jobs  are  to  get  attention.  I'm 
thankful  that  the  prosperity  of  football  does  not 
depend  on  me,  and  that  I  can  be  bored  by  it 
without  detriment  to  the  great  cause  of  sport, 
because,  I  suppose,  it  really  is  a  great  cause, 
and  related  to  the  perpetuation  of  vigor  and 
virility  in  men. 

I  have  been  thinking  about  celibates.  There 
is  something  to  be  said  for  persons  to  whom 
celibacy  comes  natural.  To  most  persons  it 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

does  not  come  natural.  It  never  did  to  me, 
for  instance.  I  hate  it  when  it  is  forced,  and 
object  with  what  may  be  a  Protestant  detesta- 
tion to  vows  that  bind  people  to  it;  but  there 
are  marvelously  useful  people  in  the  ranks  of 
the  unmarried. 

I  Brookfield,  a  contemporary  whose  line  is  edu- 
cation, has  been  telling  me  a  story  about  a  rich 
man,  named  Thompson,  who  has  got  interested 
in  the  improvement  of  mankind.  Somebody 
said  the  other  day  that  the  men  who  get  rich 
are  those  who  are  able  to  get  more  out  of  other 
people  than  other  people  get  out  of  them.  That 
is  a  very  plausible  definition  and  good  as  far  as 
it  goes,  but  the  story  I  heard  made  me  realize 
that  it  doesn't  cover  all  the  ground,  and  that 
many  rich  men  are  creators  of  wealth.  This 
Thompson  that  I  heard  of  had  extraordinary 
brains  for  business.  He  could  think  to  the 
bottom  of  propositions,  and  think  out  all  their 
details  and  perceive  whether  they  could  be 
made  profitable  and  how.  He  got  at  business 
almost  as  young  as  Alexander  Hamilton,  for  his 
parents,  who  were  good  people,  both  died  when 
he  was  fifteen  and  left  him,  as  you  might  say, 
with  his  hat  on,  going  out  to  look  for  means  of 

106 


A   CONTRIBUTION   FROM   MAJOR   BRACE 

support.  He  went  to  a  big  town  and  got  a 
job  with  a  good  concern.  At  the  end  of  three 
years  he  was  ill,  probably  from  overwork.  His 
employer  told  him  to  go  away  and  stay  two 
months  and  get  rested.  He  went,  and  stayed 
six  weeks,  and  came  back  with  the  biggest 
bunch  of  orders  that  the  firm  had  ever  had. 
His  employer  saw  then  that  he  was  incorri- 
gible, and  pretty  soon  he  took  him  into  part- 
nership. 

Now  there  comes  another  likeness  to  Hamil- 
ton. The  boy  wanted  to  know  more,  and  deter- 
mined that  when  he  had  got  money  enough  he 
would  quit  work  and  go  off  and  study.  He 
calculated  that  he  would  have  a  million  dol- 
lars by  the  time  he  was  twenty-six,  and  he 
thought  that  would  do.  He  actually  did  get 
his  million  and  something  to  spare  at  twenty- 
six  (and  this  is  not  a  newspaper  story,  either; 
Brookfield  told  it  to  me),  and  actually  did  pull 
out  and  go  off  to  Europe  and  spent  three  years 
in  France  and  Germany  improving  his  mind. 
Now  comes  in  his  gift  of  celibacy,  in  which  he 
was  quite  different  from  Hamilton — who  never 
had  any  discernible  talent  that  way — and  from 
me.  Instead  of  getting  married  and  raising  a 

107 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

family,  and  having  a  flower-garden  and  horses 
and  cows — this  being  before  they  had  invented 
automobiles — and  enjoying  life,  he  did  not  get 
married  at  all.  I  don't  know  why  not.  Maybe 
he  didn't  know  how  and  was  too  old  to  learn; 
maybe  somebody  else  persuaded  the  girl  that 
he  aspired  to  persuade.  At  any  rate,  he  didn't 
marry,  but  came  home  and  made  lots  more 
money,  and  finally  retired  from  active  business 
and  set  his  wits  to  see  what  he  could  do  to  make 
the  world  better.  Now  he  lives  on  twelve  or 
fifteen  thousand  a  year,  and  spends  most  of  his 
strength  and  his  surplus  income  and  more  or 
less  of  his  principal  chiefly  on  one  considerable 
enterprise  that  combines  philanthropy  and 
education.  But  he  is  dragged  back  into  busi- 
ness now  and  then,  Brookfield  told  me,  when 
a  commercial  rescue  job  offers,  that  looks  so 
difficult  that  nobody  else  will  touch  it. 

Of  course,  celibacy  has  no  particular  bearing 
on  Thompson's  usefulness  except  that  he  was 
qualified  to  get  along  with  it,  and  it  left  him 
entirely  free  to  spend  himself  in  trying  to  better 
the  general  conditions  of  life.  It  is  not  news 
that  there  are  always  some  mighty  useful 
bachelors  about.  Still  less  is  it  news  that  there 

108 


A   CONTRIBUTION   FROM   MAJOR   BRACE 

are  many  indispensable  spinsters.  I  suppose 
the  sentiment  that  everybody  must  get  married 
and  have  four  children  has  got  some  open  seams 
in  it;  but  a  life  is  the  thing  that  folks  like  best 
to  leave  in  the  world,  and  with  reason,  for,  on 
the  whole,  a  life,  if  it  is  good  enough,  lasts  the 
best  of  anything,  and  leaves  the  most  imperish- 
able effects. 

It  is  too  soon  yet  to  say  if  my  son  Samuel  is 
going  to  leave  an  imperishable  effect  in  the 
world,  but  he  is  doing  well,  and  the  more  perish- 
able effects  have  already  been  found  to  be  so 
little  suited  to  him  that  one  of  his  grandmothers 
has  given  him  a  modern  rag-doll — an  elegant 
creation  that  comes  from  a  shop — and  the  other 
a  teddy-bear.  Teddy-bears  are  scarcer  in  the 
toy  shops  than  they  were,  because  the  current 
of  politics  has  rolled  on,  but  they  can  still 
be  had  and  may  yet  become  more  plentiful. 
Samuel  lives  a  care-free  life.  In  that  respect 
he  is  an  example  and  encouragement  to  us  all. 
He  assumes  no  responsibility  about  anything, 
takes  his  nourishment  without  turning  a  hair  or 
sweating  so  much  as  one  bead,  and  shows  indif- 
ference to  the  primal  curse.  It  is  cheering  and 
strengthening  to  have  such  a  spirit  in  the  family. 

109 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

Ben  Bowling,  who  came  home  with  me  to 
dinner  the  other  night,  has  some  of  Samuel's 
quality.  Ben  likes  life  and  does  not  care  what 
happens.  I  threatened  him  with  universal 
prohibition  and  the  total  disappearance  of  po- 
table grog  from  Christendom.  He  said  it  would 
never  happen  so,  but  if  it  did  he  didn't  care. 
He  drank  too  much,  anyhow,  and  if  there  was 
nothing  to  drink  it  would  be  good  for  his  health 
and  save  him  lots  of  money.  I  threatened  him 
with  woman  suffrage.  He  refused  even  to  ob- 
ject; said  checkers  was  still  checkers  after  all 
the  pieces  had  got  into  the  king-row,  and  as 
good  a  game  as  ever,  though  with  differences 
of  detail.  I  threatened  him  with  stagnation 
of  all  industrial  activity  as  the  result  of  enforc- 
ing the  Sherman  law.  He  didn't  care;  said 
he  worked  too  hard,  anyway,  and  needed  a 
rest;  could  eat  very  simple  food  at  a  pinch; 
was  too  fat;  was  threatened  with  an  unsuitable 
entanglement  of  the  affections,  and  might  es- 
cape the  bag  if  the  times  were  hard  enough. 
Then  we  all  talked  about  the  Sherman  law.  I 
see  in  the  papers  that  the  consumption  of 
alcoholic  drinks  in  the  United  States  last  year 
was  the  greatest  on  record.  No  wonder,  when 

no 


A  CONTRIBUTION  FROM  MAJOR  BRACE 

you  think  how  much  the  Sherman  law  has  been 
talked  over:  a  dry  subject  on  which  you  get 
no  further  and  sink  into  despondency  unless 
buoyed  up.  It  is  funny  to  see  the  sagacity  of 
the  country  flunked,  apparently,  by  that  prob- 
lem. What  Ben  and  I  agree  on  is  so,  and  we 
agreed  that  the  Sherman  law,  grinding  out 
prosecutions  and  disorganizing  business  because 
public  opinion  could  not  settle  on  any  plan  to 
improve  or  amend  it,  was  not  unlike  the  silver- 
purchase  law  that  kept  loading  silver  into  the 
Treasury  and  scaring  off  gold  until  Cleveland 
finally  got  it  repealed.  We  did  not  agree  that 
the  Sherman  law  ought  to  be  repealed,  but  did 
agree  that  it  might  elect  the  next  President. 
Also  that  neither  party  was  satisfied  with  any 
one  who  was  running  for  nomination,  though 
that  is  perhaps  not  an  unusual  condition  when 
nomination  is  still  five  or  six  months  off.  But 
Ben  did  not  care.  He  was  attentive,  interested, 
and  amused,  but  hoped  to  stay  aboard,  no 
matter  what  the  weather  was,  and  help  in 
navigation  if  his  services  were  required.  He 
and  Samuel  are  reassuring. 

Another  thing  I  find  reassuring  is  the  glimpses 
I  get  now  and  then  of  men  who  are  at  work 

111 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

providing  government  for  the  country;  espe- 
cially unadvertised  men  whom  few  people  ever 
hear  of,  who  hold  no  office  and  aspire  to  none; 
whose  pictures  are  never  in  the  papers,  nor  their 
names  in  the  reporter's  books  or  the  mouths 
of  the  multitude.  I  heard  the  other  day  about 
one  such  person  (Brookfield  told  me),  a  man  of 
sufficient  fortune — a  million,  I  dare  say — not 
a  celibate  like  Thompson,  but  married  and  with 
a  few  children;  a  shrewd,  experienced,  thought- 
ful man,  whose  interest  in  life  is  and  always 
has  been  politics,  to  handle  the  machinery  of 
it  and  get  the  best  results  compatible  with  the 
material  offered  to  pass  laws  and  fill  the  offices, 
and  the  prejudices  and  mental  disabilities  of 
the  voters.  "I  have  known  that  man,"  Brook- 
field  said,  "for  eighteen  years,  and  watched  him 
play  politics  all  that  time;  plan  and  direct; 
weigh  men  and  choose  between  them;  use  their 
talents  and  abilities  when  they  had  them;  put 
them  in  places  where  they  belonged  when  he 
could;  put  in  the  next-best  man  when  he 
couldn't.  He  always  played  fair;  always 
wanted  the  best  man,  the  best  law,  and  the 
best  principle  that  he  could  see,  and  never 

wanted  anything  for  himself  except  the  fun  of 
112 


A  CONTRIBUTION  FROM  MAJOR   BRACE 

playing  the  game.  You  couldn't  drive  him 
into  office.  He  never  tried  to  make  a  penny 
out  of  legislation.  The  less  he  was  seen  and 
heard  of  the  better  he  liked  it,  but  he  recognized 
politics  as  the  great  man's  game,  and  he  liked 
to  play  it.  No  doubt  the  sense  of  power  was 
pleasant  to  him,  but  his  use  of  power  was  en- 
tirely conscientious,  and  the  source  of  his  power 
was  never  money,  but  the  confidence  that  men 
had  in  his  sagacity  and  his  unselfishness.  Back 
in  him  somewhere  there  was,  of  course,  a  sense 
of  duty  and  a  belief  in  certain  principles  of 
government,  and  a  sort  of  unconscious  con- 
secration to  the  desire  to  see  our  experiment 
in  government  go  well  and  to  see  the  country 
prosper.  But  the  immediate  interest  that  kept 
his  mind  busy  was  just  a  delight  in  guiding  the 
political  affairs  of  men." 

I  dare  say  Brookfield's  man  is  an  exceptional 
political  boss;  but  I  dare  say,  also,  that  in  so 
far  as  we  have,  or  ever  have  had,  or  will  have, 
decent  government,  we  owe  it  to  somebody 
who  has  had  a  call  to  provide  it  for  us,  and  has 
had  the  talents  necessary  to  make  his  call 
effective.  The  rare  thing  about  Brookfield's 
man,  as  he  described  him,  was  his  self-efface- 

113 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

ment  and  superiority  to  vanity.  He  loved  to 
play  the  game,  but  not  only  never  thought  of 
the  gate  money,  but  never  cared  to  be  a  grand- 
stand player.  To  do  the  job  and  do  it  well 
brought  him  the  joy  of  a  true  artist  in  his  art. 
As  I  said,  I  have  felt  encouraged  about  the 
future  of  politics  in  this  country  since  I  heard 
about  him.  If  he  had  been  a  saint  I  wouldn't 
have  been  so  much  encouraged,  but  Brookfield 
represented  him  as  a  mere  human  being,  like 
any  of  us,  looking  about  for  things  that  in- 
terested his  mind  and  made  life  taste  good,  and 
finding  them  supremely  in  politics.  It  is  an 
encouragement  to  find  that  our  politics  is  so 
good  a  game  that  folks  with  money  and  brains 
enough  to  experiment  with  pleasures  will  play 
at  it  purely  for  their  inward  satisfaction,  and 
without  attention  even  to  the  applause.  Of 
course,  men  of  that  temperament  and  that  high 
degree  of  sagacity  and  self-control  are  rare,  but 
we  have  our  share  of  men  with  an  insight  into 
cause  and  effect,  and  an  understanding  of  the 
human  mind  both  in  the  individual  and  in  the 
crowd,  and  with  ability  to  hear  what  is  going 
on  when  they  put  their  ears  to  the  ground,  and 
with  a  lively  interest  in  human  affairs  that  must 

114 


A   CONTRIBUTION   FROM    MAJOR   BRACE 

surely  draw  them  into  politics  whenever  they 
see  that  politics  is  a  paramount  interest.  We 
have  no  picturesque  Dukes  of  Devonshire 
drudging  dutifully  at  government  without 
vanity  or  political  ambition,  as  fathers  drudge 
for  their  families,  and  as  Washington,  maybe, 
drudged  for  us,  but  I  believe  we  have  a  native 
product  of  our  own  that  does  like  work,  and 
quite  as  often  with  intelligence,  because  the 
work  calls  to  them  and  because  they  not  only 
feel  the  responsibilities  of  civilization,  but  find 
delight  in  undertaking  them. 

AndVhy  not,  to  be  sure!  What  else  is  there 
in  life. that  is  so  fruitful  in  recompenses  as  a 
cheerful  undertaking  of  the  responsibilities  of 
civilization?  Mine  are  represented  mainly,  as 
yet,  by  Cordelia  and  Samuel,  but  I  mean  to 
undertake  lots  more.  I  see  quantities  of  them 
about  waiting  to  be  undertaken.  So  does  Cor- 
delia, who  is  one  of  the  most  active  and  respon- 
sible of  responsibilities,  and,  being  less  tied  up 
to  wage-earning  than  I  am,  gives  more  attention 
to  putting  props  under  civilization. 


VI 

POLITICS 

MY  calling  does  not  seemnowadays  to  inspire 
respect.  Folks  hoot  at  lawyers,  declaring 
with  much  reiteration  that  law  has  ceased  to 
be  a  profession  and  become  a  business.  They 
vary  that  by  pointing  out  that  all  the  best 
talent  in  it  is  bought  up  day  by  day  by  the 
corporations  and  the  rich.  Even  the  judges — 
look  at  them!  The  current  disposition  is,  when 
you  don't  like  a  decision  of  a  court,  to  take  the 
judge's  number  and  write  to  the  management 
to  have  him  fired.  It  is  to  laugh  at  decisions 
and  the  feeling  about  them.  The  other  day 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  decided  some- 
thing thus  and  so  by  four  to  three.  Justices 
1,  3,  and  5  protested  vigorously.  Personally  I 
sustained  the  dissenting  opinion,  and  thought 
the  decision  left  the  law  in  a  bad  condition. 
That  could  be  cured  by  Congress,  which  is  per- 
haps the  best  way,  but  the  popular  method 

116 


POLITICS 

would  be  to  dock  Justices  2,  4,  6,  and  7  a 
month's  pay,  and  try  the  case  again  with  a  full 
court.  That's  how  folks  seem  to  feel,  and  per- 
haps some  of  them  would  act  on  their  feelings. 

Some  of  them!  Stars  above!  What  some 
of  us  would  do  is  past  guessing.  What  some 
of  us  are  thought  capable  of  doing  quite  out- 
runs belief,  but  that  is  because  the  air  is  charged 
with  politics  and  with  plans  and  specifications 
for  making  over  the  world,  and  with  a  percept- 
ible leaning,  as  I  have  intimated,  toward  be- 
ginning with  the  legal  profession. 

Oh,  well,  let  'em!  I'm  not  afraid.  A  man 
who  can  make  a  living  by  law  can  make  a  living 
at  something  else  if  necessary.  It  is  the  under- 
standing when  they  put  young  fellows  to  learn 
the  law  that  they  will  be  qualified,  more  or  less, 
if  they  learn  it,  not  only  to  be  lawyers,  but  to 
be  bankers,  brokers,  railroad  officers,  editors,  mil- 
liners, grocers,  contractors,  and  nurses-general 
to  ailing  industries,  and  undertakers.  Ac- 
cordingly they  usually  appoint  lawyers  to 
receiverships,  and  usually  the  appointees  go 
ahead  and  bury  the  patient.  No  doubt  it  is  a 
natural  consequence  of  this  theory  that  lawyers 
shall  know  and  do  everybody's  business  that 

117 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

there  is  this  prevalence  of  impressions  that 
everybody  ought  to  be  able  to  beat  the  lawyers 
at  law.  Of  course  there  ought  to  be  reciprocity 
in  omniscience.  Of  course  the  lawyer  trade  can 
be  overdone,  but  there's  more  to  it  than  these 
recall  people  think.  I  guess  it  will  last  my  time. 
It's  the  science  of  keeping  order  in  the  world. 
I  admit  that  it  needs  assistance  from  cops  and 
sometimes  from  soldiers,  and  cannon  and  war- 
ships, and  that  too  much  of  the  time  it  keeps  a 
sort  of  crystallized  disorder  that  has  to  be 
smashed  occasionally  and  rearranged.  But 
when  it  comes  to  rearrangement,  back  they 
come  to  the  lawyers,  professors  of  the  science 
of  keeping  order  in  the  world. 

It  is  interesting  how  people  divide  in  politics. 
All  the  decent  people  seem  to  be  after  the  same 
thing,  more  or,  less,  but  differ  according  to 
knowledge,  temperament,  circumstances,  and 
affiliations  as  to  methods  of  getting  it.  And  the 
differences  last  so  wonderfully!  There's  free 
trade  and  protection,  or  high  and  low  protection 
— we've  been  discussing  those  matters  in  this 
country  voluminously  and  insistently  for  from 
fifty  to  a  hundred  years,  and  by  far  the  most 
of  us  don't  know  now  precisely  where  we  stand. 

118 


POLITICS 

We  are,  reasonably  enough,  for  as  much  im- 
provement as  will  do  us  good,  and  not  for  any 
more  than  is  helpful  at  the  price.  But  tariff- 
improvement  isn't  to  be  had  in  quarter-yard 
lengths.  Congress  makes  a  rough  effort  to 
please  customers,  and  when  it  has  finished  it 
is  take  it  or  leave  it,  and  the  customers  usually 
go  off  grumbling. 

And  the  other  things  that  people  want — re- 
straint of  corporations,  restraint  of  labor-unions, 
restraint  of  political  bosses,  changes  in  the 
machinery  of  politics,  hand-made  government 
by  the  people,  single  taxes,  income  taxes, 
minimum  wages,  municipal  ownership  of  public 
utilities,  votes  for  women — my  gracious — there's 
a  new  remedy  every  day. 

Not  but  that  many  of  them  are  good  and 
some  of  them  timely.  The  world  seems  to  be 
progressive  nowadays,  and  I  suppose  its  prog- 
ress is  upward,  and  not  to  the  bow-wows.  But 
it  is  to  wonder  about  every  proposed  change 
whether  it  is  really  improvement  or  merely 
change,  and  about  every  novelty  that  people 
clamor  for  whether  their  true  need  is  not  some- 
thing else — a  change  in  themselves,  rather  than 
any  practicable  change  in  the  regulations  of  life. 

9  119 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

For  one  need  not  be  very  old  to  observe  that 
different  people  make  out  very  differently  in 
the  same  circumstances,  and  that  folks  affect 
circumstances  much  more  than  circumstances 
affect  folks.  Yet  circumstances  do  affect  folks 
very  much,  crush  them  sometimes,  and  stunt 
or  warp  them  often;  and  certainly  there  is  an 
obligation  in  the  folks  who  have  it  in  them  to 
affect  circumstances  to  improve  them  for  the 
benefit  of  all  hands,  and  provide  reasonable 
access  to  opportunity. 

Do  I  get  in  with  the  cart-tail  orators  this 
campaign?  Why  not,  to  be  sure?  Politics  has 
been  an  early  crop  this  year,  sprouting  hard  in 
March,  and  working  overtime  ever  since,  with 
an  enormous  profusion  of  discourse  and  a  vast 
expenditure  of  time  and  money  in  a  general 
public  effort  to  get  somewhere.  But  that's  all 
right.  The  crop  is  going  to  be  worth  the  labor. 
This  is  really  the  first  time  the  political  school 
has  been  run  wide  open  since  Bryan's  first  cam- 
paign, and  that  was  sixteen  years  ago,  a  period 
that  carries  me  clear  back  to  Eton  collars.  Alas 
for  me!  I  suppose  I'm  a  sort  of  conservative. 
They  ought  to  examine  the  blood  and  find  out 

where  people  belong,  and  save  us  some  of  our 

120 


POLITICS 

mental  struggles  to  discover  it  by  cerebral 
analysis.  I  don't  know  what's  in  my  blood, 
but  when  people  are  for  scuttling  the  ship  so 
as  to  get  the  boats  out  easier  I  always  seem  to 
be  for  some  other  plan.  Now  and  then  it's 
necessary  to  scuttle.  There  was  the  everlast- 
ing French  Revolution,  where  they  blew  up 
their  ship,  and  in  the  long  run  made  a  good 
thing  out  of  it.  But  that  was  an  exceptionally 
rotten  ship,  and  they  had  things  fixed  aboard 
so  that  the  crew  were  too  successfully  separated 
from  the  grub — a  feat  that  a  large  share  of 
human  ability  seems  always  at  work  to  accom- 
plish, and  which,  when  it  is  successfully  pulled 
off,  achieves  a  very  penetrating  and  compre- 
hensive quality  of  ruin.  Perhaps  it  is  the  con- 
servative molecules  in  my  blood  that  makes  me 
as  much  adverse  to  this  detachment  of  the  crew 
from  the  grub  as  I  am  to  blowing  up  the  ship. 
No  true  friend  of  navigation  wants  either  of 
them. 

I  guess  it's  more  fun  to  be  a  meat-ax  radical 
than  a  conservative.  The  ax-handle  is  a  simple 
implement,  and  probably  blisters  the  hands  less 
than  this  eternal  pulling  on  the  sheets  and 

throwing  the  wheel  over.    But  we  don't  really 
121 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

choose  our  line  in  politics.  We  take  the  steer 
we  get  from  our  inside,  and  which  comes  down 
to  us,  no  doubt,  from  our  forebears,  along  with 
the  tendency  to  fat  or  lean,  and  variations  in 
the  adherence  of  hairs  to  our  scalps.  I  dare 
say  we  are  not  as  grateful  as  we  should  be  to 
other  persons  whose  molecular  inheritance  is 
different  from  ours  for  going  their  way  and  fol- 
lowing their  hereditary  propensities,  so  that 
we  can  better  and  more  helpfully  follow  ours. 
If  we  all  got  the  same  steer  I  dare  say  the  ship 
would  run  aground.  To  avoid  that  there  comes 
this  variety  of  propensity,  and  also  the  great 
principle  of  reaction  on  inherited  inclinations, 
which  has  always  raised  up  from  time  to  time 
such  valuable  and  efficient  revolutionaries. 
The  pinch  for  the  natural  conservatives  comes 
at  times  when  conservatism  has  outrun  its 
license  and  crystallized  into  a  do-nothingness 
which  is  more  dangerous  than  radicalism.  Then 
the  real  conservatives  like  me,  who  always  want 
to  let  things  down 'easy,  have  to  flop,  and  it  is 
always  a  very  nice  matter  to  know  just  when 
to  do  it  and  what  to  flop  to. 

This  is  a  pretty  floppy  year,  no  doubt  about 
it.     I'd  give  a  penny  to  know  whose  cart-tail,  if 

122 


POLITICS 

any,  I  should  aspire  to  mount.  Great  din  at 
this  writing,  and  a  handsome  field  of  candidates, 
with  leaders  whom  we  have  been  contemplating 
for  months,  and  putting  on  the  scales  and  pull- 
ing off,  and  whose  points  we  have  reckoned  and 
re-reckoned.  And  as  it  comes  to  the  choice, 
how  prevalent  is  dubiety  of  mind  as  to  whether 
we  shall  get  candidates  for  whom  we  want  to 
vote!  Was  there  ever  such  a  lot  of  men  put 
up  for  office?  I  read  the  papers,  all  varieties 
of  them,  and  have  been  studying  candidates 
hard  now  for  three  or  four  months,  and  begin 
to  wonder  how  so  many  incompetent  or  un- 
principled citizens  have  contrived  to  cheat  the 
gallows  and  avoid  all  places  of  detention  all 
these  years.  Not  one  of  them  has  so  much  as 
been  to  jail  as  yet.  I  dare  say  they  would  pass 
even  now  as  half-way  decent  men  if  they  were 
not  candidates.  Perhaps  we  are  too  particular. 
I  notice  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  impor- 
tant work  in  the  world  has  been  done  by  pretty 
bad  men:  men,  some  of  them,  who  would  have 
been  insufferable  if  they  had  not  been  indis- 
pensable. When  things  are  in  a  bad-enough 
hole,  the  indispensable  man  has  to  be  taken 
whether  he  is  insufferable  or  not.  But  luckily 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

we're  not  up  against  it  so  hard  as  that.  Nobody 
seems  indispensable  this  year.  Our  world 
seems  to  me  less  tippy  nowadays,  blowing  as  it 
is  at  all  its  blow-holes,  than  it  did  six  or  seven 
years  ago,  when  stocks  were  kiting  and  being 
kited,  and  everybody  was  consolidating,  and 
every  active  person  who  wasn't  a  syndicate  or 
an  underwriter  of  something  was  asking  the 
way  to  those  fashionable  employments.  We 
have  blown  off  a  lot  of  steam  since  then,  and 
our  safety-valves  are  all  working  pretty  well; 
and,  though  they're  noisy,  to  me  they  don't 
look  dangerous.  We  must  be  patient  with  the 
candidates,  and  look  sometimes  on  their  bright 
sides.  When  we  regard  them  all  with  discon- 
tent, it  is  too  much  like  that  common  saying, 
"Why  do  women  marry  such  men?"  They 
marry  the  best  in  sight,  and  that's  all  we  can 
do  about  candidates.  But,  by  George!  the 
light  that  beats  upon  a  throne  is  mere  moon- 
shine to  the  light  that  beats  upon  a  candidate. 
We  shall  see  about  the  candidates,  but  just 
what  we  shall  see  beats  me. 


VII 

WE    DINE    OUT   AND    DISCUSS    EDUCATION 

WE  want  to  ask  people  to  dinner — at  least 
/  do — and  do  ask  a  good  many,  first  and 
last,  in  spite  of  restricted  space  and  our  other 
restrictions.  About  four  besides  ourselves  is 
our  limit,  and  that's  a  dinner-party.  More 
often  I  bring  home  a  man,  or  a  married  pair 
of  our  generation  come  in  and  bring  new  topics 
and  points  of  view,  and  sometimes  news,  into 
our  discourse.  People  seem  willing  enough  to 
come  to  dinner  if  you  have  something  to  eat 
in  the  house  and  something  to  say.  I  sometimes 
wish  we  had  more  dinner-parties,  but  the  doc- 
trine of  compensation  conies  in  on  that,  for,  I 
suppose,  if  we  were  rich  enough  to  have  people 
to  dinner  whenever  we  wanted,  we  would  have 
to  dine  out  the  rest  of  the  time,  and  the  up- 
shot of  it  would  be  that  we  would  never  have 
time  to  read  up  anything  really  good  to  say. 
But  we  do  dine  out  considerably  as  it  is,  not 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

only  with  our  cherished  relatives  who  regale 
us  when  occasion  offers  (and  also  when  it 
doesn't)  with  meat,  drink,  and  affection,  but 
also  with  our  friends,  both  those  who  live  some- 
what near  our  economic  plane  and  those  who 
move  and  have  beings  in  planes  much  more 
exalted  and  profuse. 

For  example,  we  dine  sometimes  with  Major 
and  Mrs.  Brace,  indulgent  elders  of  whom  I 
have  so  often  spoken,  and  who,  I  think,  are  dis- 
posed to  assume  some  restricted  but  affection- 
ate responsibility  for  our  successful  progress 
through  this  vale  of  dues.  We  are  on  such 
terms  with  that  family  that  Mrs.  Brace  has  a 
habit  of  telephoning  to  Cordelia  please4o  come 
and  fill  in  at  a  dinner-party  when  a  pair  of 
guests  give  out  at  the  last  moment,  which  we 
do,  when  we  can,  with  cheerfulness  of  spirit. 
Then  the  Major  bestows  little  jobs  of  law  busi- 
ness on  me  from  time  to  time,  and  is  apt  to  say 
"Come  to  dinner,  and  talk  it  over,  and  fetch 
Cordelia."  And  then  we  talk  other  things  over 
also,  and  maybe  play  auction  bridge  for  an 
hour. 

The  last  one  of  Mrs.  Brace's  dinners  we  filled 
in  at  was  unusually  well  stocked  with  persons 

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WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

apt  at  discussion,  and  the  talk  took  a  turn 
toward  the  education  of  women,  and  more  par- 
ticularly the  education  of  daughters  of  well- 
to-do  parents  in  New  York.  On  the  general 
subject  I  don't  see  that  there  is  much  to  dis- 
cuss. The  prevailing  practice  is  to  teach  girls 
up  to  eighteen  or  nineteen  years  of  age  any- 
thing that  they  will  consent  to  learn,  the  same 
as  boys.  The  girls  don't  go  to  college  yet  as 
generally  as  the  boys  do,  but  they  go  a  good 
deal,  and  more  and  more,  I  should  say,  all  the 
time.  The  girls'  colleges  prosper  and  increase 
in  number  and  in  size,  but  the  authorities  seem 
to  feel  that  they  have  not  yet  fully  struck  their 
gait;  not  yet  established  themselves  as  the 
best  places  for  girls  in  general  between  eighteen 
and  twenty-two,  and  not  yet  demonstrated  to 
the  satisfaction  of  all  the  observant  and  con- 
siderate that  the  training  they  give  fulfils  its 
aim,  and  is  better  worth  the  time  of  girls  who 
acquire  it  or  might  acquire  it  than  some  other 
things  that  some  of  them  are  or  might  be  doing 
in  those  four  years,  if  they  were  not  doing  that. 
You  may  say  that  the  same  reluctance  of 
unrestricted  approval  attaches  to  the  boys' 
colleges.  There  was  the  New  Haven  lady  who 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

felt  so  strongly  that  Yale  was  one  of  the  more 
popular  gates  of  hell,  and  the  late  Mr.  Crane, 
of  Chicago,  who  maintained  that  our  whole 
system  of  college  education  was  pernicious  and 
a  shocking  waste  of  time,  and  Dr.  Wilson,  late 
of  Princeton,  who  felt  so  strongly  that  the 
college  side-shows,  athletic  and  social,  had  di- 
verted to  themselves  the  stronger  currents  of 
young  life,  to  the  great  detriment  of  the  aca- 
demic perfomance  in  the  main  tent,  and  who 
did  what  he  could  to  bring  them  back.  Cer- 
tainly the  boys'  colleges  are  imperfect  enough, 
and  are  conceded  both  by  their  friends  and  their 
detractors  to  be  so,  but  at  least  they  have  won 
in  the  competition  with  home  training.  As  a 
rule,  the  boys  who  can,  go  to  college.  They 
may  not  get  there  what  they  should,  but  they 
are  not  kept  at  home  and  put  into  business,  or 
brought  out  into  society,  for  fear  that  what 
they  may  miss  by  not  staying  at  home  will  be 
more  valuable  than  what  they  may  gain  by 
being  in  college.  All  sorts  of  boys  go  to  college; 
the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  fashionable  and  the 
simple;  the  boys  with  a  living  to  scramble  for, 
and  those  with  cotton-wadded  places  and  ready- 
made  incomes  waiting  for  them.  It  is  felt 

128 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

that  boys  must  know  One  another  if  they  know 
nothing  else,  and  that  college  is  a  good  place 
to  get  that  knowledge. 

So  it  is  felt  about  girls,  that  they  must  know 
one  another,  and  also  boys,  if  nothing  else,  but 
college  is  not  yet  the  place  where  the  more 
modish  girls  in  the  biggest  cities  can  know  the 
girls  whom  it  belongs  to  them  to  know.  The 
American  girls  from  the  big  cities  who  are 
advantageously  situated  for  experiments  in 
polite  society  do  not  yet  go  much  to  college. 
Their  brothers  go  as  matter  of  course.  Their 
brothers,  like  as  not,  are  sent  five  or  six  years 
to  boarding-school,  and  then  three  or  four 
years  to  college,  and  then  perhaps  kept  away 
several  years  longer  learning  the  rudiments  of 
some  profession  in  which  they  start  to  work 
at  twenty-five  or  later.  But  to  keep  the  girls 
off  in  institutions  away  from  their  mothers, 
until  they  reach  so  ripe  an  age  as  that,  or  even 
the  maturity  of  twenty-two,  is  an  experiment 
that  affectionate  parents  who  have  social  as- 
pirations for  their  daughters,  and  some  means 
of  furthering  them,  are  apt  to  look  upon  with 
hostility,  doubt,  or,  at  best,  with  grudging  and 
uncertain  approval.  The  mass  of  the  college 

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REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

girls  seems  to  be  recruited  from  the  lesser  cities, 
or  from  families  whose  daughters  have  a  doubt- 
ful prospect,  or  worse,  of  inheriting  means  of 
support,  and  must,  as  a  matter  of  common 
prudence,  be  qualified  betimes  for  self-mainte- 
nance and  all  the  kinds  of  self-help,  against  a 
turn  of  fortune  that  may  leave  them  without 
a  competent  wage-earner  to  depend  on. 

These  considerations  all  got  due  attention 
at  Mrs.  Brace's  dinner-party.  "Send  Maria 
to  college?"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Van  Pelt.  "What 
for?  She's  eighteen,  and  has  been  to  school 
as  it  is  ever  since  she  was  four  years  old,  and  to 
boarding-school  three  years,  and  knows  an  enor- 
mous amount,  and  can  read  and  spell  fairly, 
speak  some  French,  and  read  German,  and 
knows  the  English  kings,  and  a  few  of  the 
Presidents,  and  whether  Dryden  or  Milton 
wrote  the  'Fairy  Queen.'  Mercy !  The  child's 
crammed  with  knowledge;  what  she  needs  to 
know  is  how  to  use  some  of  it.  She  can't  talk 
at  a  dinner-party.  I  want  her  to  learn  to  talk. 
I  want  her  to  have  an  acquaintance.  It  won't 
hurt  her  to  inspect  the  young  gentlemen.  The 
colleges  are  nunneries,  full  of  nuns  whose 
mothers  I  don't  know,  busy  learning  unim- 

130 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

portant  things  like  how  to  cut  up  frogs,  and  the 
pedigrees  of  the  Saxon  kings,  and  eschatology, 
and  neglecting  all  the  important  things  like  how 
to  put  on  a  hat,  how  to  cut  up  a  lobster,  how  to 
keep  hair  attached  to  the  scalp,  how  to  talk  to 
a  boy,  how  to  help  a  mother,  how  to  engage  a 
cook,  whom  to  ask  to  a  dinner-party.  Why 
college?  Maria  'd  come  home  in  four  years, 
forgotten  by  all  the  girls  she  ought  to  know, 
qualified  to  be  a  school-teacher  and  with  a  large 
acquaintance  among  young  ladies  similarly 
qualified,  and  with  a  strong  and  reasonable 
impulse  to  put  her  acquirements  to  practical 
use  either  by  continuing  her  studies  or  getting 
a  situation  and  earning  her  living.  I  don't 
want  her  to  get  a  situation  and  earn  her  living, 
I  want  her  to  get  married." 

"Oh,  come!"  said  the  Major,  who  was  sitting 
next  to  her.  "It  isn't  so  bad  as  that.  I  know 
Maria.  She'll  get  married  anyhow,  but  give 
her  time.  Does  she  want  to  go  to  college?" 

"She  could  have  gone.  She  knew  enough 
when  she  got  out  of  school.  She  passed  the 
examinations,  and  she  thought  about  it  more 
or  less.  But  finally  she  came  out  instead. 
She  may  go  yet.  I  don't  know.  She  still  talks 

131 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

to  her  father  about  it,  and  meanwhile  she  takes 
courses  with  learned  women  about  art  and  such 
things,  and  does  something  at  music.  And  she 
goes  to  dances  a  little,  and  dines  out  a  little, 
and  slums  a  little,  and  organizes  charity  a 
little." 

"Does  she  play  with  the  boys?" 
"A  very  little.  The  young  men  don't  seem 
to  be  the  absorbing  interest  they  were  when  I 
was  young.  But  I  suppose  that  is  more  a 
change  in  human  nature.  New  York  has  come 
to  be  a  good  deal  of  a  street-car,  with  people 
crowding  in  and  out  all  the  time,  and  the  con- 
ductor perpetually  calling  out,  *  Please  move 
up  there  in  front !'  Girls  and  young  men  don't 
meet  here  familiarly  any  more.  I  don't  know 
how  they  ever  see  enough  of  one  another  to  get 
married  unless  they  meet  in  the  summer  some- 
where. New  York  girls  seem  mostly  to  marry 
men  they  meet  on  steamers,  nowadays." 

"I  understand,"  said  the  Major,  "that  our 
population  is  now  divided  into  those  who  travel 
and  those  who  stay  at  home.  Those  who  travel 
meet,  especially  on  steamers  where  they  are 
cooped  up  together  with  a  week  of  idle  time  on 
their  hands  and  are  liable  to  develop  mutual 

132 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

appreciations.  Those  who  don't  travel  also 
meet  more  or  less,  and  some  of  them  seem  to 
marry.  There  were  you  and  Cordelia,  Pere- 
grine; you  were  not  a  traveler,  yet  you  got 
married  somehow." 

"Oh  yes,"  said  I.  "I  had  to.  There  was 
nothing  else  that  I  wanted  to  do  that  was  com- 
patible with  earning  a  living.  I  never  traveled. 
I  never  could;  but  Cordelia  traveled  plenty." 

"To  be  sure,"  put  in  Mrs.  Van  Pelt,  "they 
can  travel  if  they  don't  go  to  college.  It  doesn't 
cost  much  more,  and  they  have  the  time.  And 
they  do  travel.  Also  they  visit  about  with 
their  school  friends,  and  find  their  way  about 
Boston  and  Philadelphia  and  Washington  and 
other  places  more  civilized  than  this,  and  I  have 
known  of  girls  who  went  to  visit  in  St.  Louis, 
Chicago,  and  St.  Paul,  which  was  interesting 
and  enlarging  to  the  mind,  though  not  so  neces- 
sary perhaps  as  though  we  did  not  have  the 
finished  products  of  those  cities  brought  daily 
to  our  doors,  and  could  not  inspect  them  and 
the  rest  of  the  United  States  any  day  on  Fifth 
Avenue,  or  by  walking  through  the  Waldorf- 
Astoria  or  the  Plaza  Hotel,  or  at  home,  or  out 
at  dinner — and  I  beg  you  to  recognize,  Mrs. 

133 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

Lamson,  that  I  remember  that  we  borrowed 
you  from  Seattle,  and  you  and  your  husband, 
Mrs.  Butler,  from  Buffalo,  and  that  I,  who  was 
brought  here  from  Baltimore,  speak  humbly 
and  with  great  respect  of  all  our  Western  cities. 
But  send  your  girl  to  college,  and  then  she  is 
like  a  butterfly  pinned  to  a  card.  Can't  visit, 
can't  travel,  can't  beguile  her  father,  can't  con- 
sole her  mother,  can't  take  her  brother  to  dances, 
can't  pay  calls,  lost  to  earth,  learning  the  family 
connections  of  mollusks — what  is  a  mollusk? — 
and  the  other  unusable  things  that  erudite  peo- 
ple have  put  into  tiresome  books.  And  yet  I 
don't  doubt  that  Maria's  father  will  send  her 
to  college  if  she  wants  to  go." 

Mr.  Van  Pelt,  farther  down  the  table,  seeing 
that  his  wife  had  the  floor,  had  lent  an  ear  to 
her  deliverance.  "Well,"  said  he,  "what  can 
you  do?  Four  years  is  only  four  years,  and  a 
girl  in  these  days  can  afford  to  spend  it  in 
getting  something  definite  and  lasting,  if  only 
she  gets  it.  I  only  know  this  game  of  being  a 
girl  by  observation.  I  have  never  played  at  it. 
But  my  wife  knows  it  as  a  player,  and  what  she 
perceives  in  it  by  experience  and  instinct  always 
outweighs  my  theories  in  my  own  judgment. 

134 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

She  decides  these  matters  except  in  so  far  as 
Maria  decides  them  for  herself,  which  is  a  good 
ways.  My  wife  is  uncertain  about  the  good  of 
girls'  colleges  because  she  never  went  to  one. 
They're  very  new.  They  didn't  prevail  so 
much  in  her  educational  period  as  they  do  now. 
They  must  be  excellent  for  girls  whose  mothers 
are  desperate  or  frivolous  characters,  from 
whom  they  need  to  be  separated.  All  the  in- 
stitutions are  valuable  in  separating  children 
with  possibilities  from  impossible  parents.  But 
where  the  parents  are  not  impossible,  of  course 
the  separation  involves  loss.  We  feel  as  to 
boys  that  the  gain  pretty  certainly  counter- 
balances it.  But  we  feel  that  girls  do  well  to 
form  the  habit  of  living  at  home,  which  is  some- 
thing that  takes  practice,  and  even  prayers, 
if  you're  going  to  do  it  as  you  should.  If  Maria 
goes  to  college,  I'm  for  having  her  sleep  at  home, 
where  I  can  see  her  at  dinner.  Though  whether 
that's  right  or  not,  I  don't  know.  I  don't  ex- 
pect to  give  Maria  more  than  a  very  imperfect 
steer  in  this  life  anyhow.  That's  all  I  got;  all 
my  wife  got;  all  my  father  and  mother  got. 
But  I  don't  mind  taking  a  chance  if  it  looks 
good,  and  the  fact  that  college  does  not  fit  con- 

10  135 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

veniently  into  the  social  machinery  that  has 
been  devised  for  the  development  of  girls  in  New 
York  does  not  appall  me.  The  machinery  exists 
for  the  benefit  of  the  girls,  not  the  girls  for  the 
machinery.  What  we  are  after  is  to  train  fine 
women.  You  don't  do  it  by  wholesale  processes. 
It  is  hard  work,  anyhow,  and  what  suits  one 
doesn't  suit  another.  It  is  with  a  girl,  I  take  it, 
as  it  is  with  a  boy.  The  facts  they  get  in  col- 
lege they  mostly  lose,  but  the  minds  of  some 
of  them  expand  in  the  process  of  getting  facts, 
and  gain  scope  and  power,  and  the  ability  to 
understand  things,  and  increased  interest  in 
life,  and  capacity.  Any  way,  so  that  the  girls 
get  their  own." 

"If  we've  all  got  to  vote  presently,"  said  Mrs. 
Brace,  "no  doubt  the  girls  will  have  to  go  to 
college.  I'm  told  we're  not  constitutional  in 
our  political  remedies." 

"As  to  votes,"  said  the  Major,  "it's  a  case 
of  half-knowledge  is  a  dangerous  thing.  The 
most  able  women  that  I  happen  to  know,  the 
most  thoroughly  trained  and  schooled  in  hard 
mental  work,  those  that  seem  to  me  the  deepest 
thinkers,  don't  want  votes  for  women.  Of 
course  college  at  its  best  is  only  a  step,  but  it 

136 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

is  a  step  toward  sound  thinking.  I  should  be 
inclined  to  argue  that  college  for  a  girl  was  a 
step  toward  giving  her  such  a  grasp  upon  human 
affairs  and  the  conditions  of  life  as  would  incline 
her  to  leave  votes  where  they  are,  and  spend 
her  strength  in  other  forms  of  expression.  So 
if  Maria  sends  herself  to  college,  Van  Pelt,  it 
may  be  a  process  in  the  making  of  a  really 
able  anti-suffragist  who  will  understand  her- 
self, and  other  women  and  men,  and  can  sift 
the  chaff  out  of  an  argument.  If  the  suffragists 
are  to  be  beaten  they  will  be  beaten  by  the  rest 
of  women — those  who  have  found  their  voca- 
tion and  are  happy  in  it,  those  who  are  busy, 
at  least,  whether  happy  or  not,  and  cannot  be 
harangued  into  excitement  about  politics,  and 
those  of  first-rate  mental  powers  and  deep  ex- 
perience, who  can  turn  the  whole  matter  over 
in  their  minds  and  conclude  that  woman  suf- 
frage would  not  help  society.  At  any  rate, 
woman  suffrage  or  not,  the  way  out  lies  in  the 
direction  of  more  power  in  the  human  mind, 
male  and  female,  and  not  hi  less." 

We  males  continued  to  discuss  this  subject 
when  the  ladies  had  gone  out  and  we  went  into 
the  Major's  library  to  burn  tobacco.  They 

137 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

set  upon  me  as  the  latest  transplantation  from 
the  college  nursery  into  the  garden  of  actual 
life,  and  demanded  to  know  what  I  had  got 
out  of  college.  I  said  that  for  one  thing  I  had 
got  an  acquaintance  with  several  hundred  men 
of  about  my  own  age,  a  good  many  of  them 
now  living  in  New  York  and  the  rest  scattered 
variously  about  the  country.  Some  of  these 
men  I  knew  intimately.  All  of  them  I  knew 
well  enough  to  have  views  about  their  qualities, 
and  what  I  knew  of  them  helped  me  to  know 
other  men,  and  gave  me  a  measure  which  helped 
me  to  estimate  men  in  general.  I  said  that  the 
way  to  know  pictures  was  to  be  where  you  could 
see  pictures,  that  the  way  to  know  men  was, 
doubtless,  to  live  with  them  and  look  them 
over,  and  that  college — a  big  college — was  a 
very  convenient  place  to  view  a  collection  of 
young  men,  and  learn  to  know  the  species.  I 
said  I  didn't  think  any  other  thing  we  got  in 
college  was  so  important  as  that,  because  the 
other  things  you  might  learn  in  a  big  college 
could  be  learned  anywhere  if  you  took  the  nec- 
essary time  and  put  in  the  necessary  work. 
But  the  beauty  about  college  was  that  you 
had  the  time  there  to  add  to  knowledge  in  all 

138 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

the  ways,  to  learn  the  men  and  also  to  in- 
spect the  books  and  examine  the  mental  se- 
cretions of  the  professors,  and  that  with  rea- 
sonable gumption  and  diligence  you  could  do 
it  all.  As  to  that  end  of  it  I  quoted  Tomlinson, 
who  dined  with  us  the  other  night.  He  is  a 
still  more  recent  college  product  than  I  am,  and 
is  still  immersed  in  law  studies.  We  got  to  talk- 
ing college  and  what  we  thought  it  had  done  for 
us,  and  he  said,  as  I  remember,  that  he  could 
hardly  recall  a  fact  that  he  had  learned  in  col- 
lege, but  still  he  thought  he  had  got  great  good 
out  of  it.  When  he  was  an  undergraduate,  he 
said,  he  was  interested  mostly  in  history,  govern- 
ment, and  economics.  When  he  got  out,  his 
tastes  entirely  changed,  and  he  got  interested 
in  literature  and  philosophy.  "Nowadays,"  said 
he,  "I  look  forward  to  Sunday  with  the  utmost 
impatience,  and  when  it  comes  round  I  put  it 
in  with  Spencer,  Huxley,  and  Emerson.  I  am 
getting  to  be  an  authority  on  biology,  I  tell 
you,  and  wrestle  with  First  Principles  in  a  way 
to  make  my  law-books  jealous." 

They  were  quite  interested  in  Tomlinson. 
The  Major  said  he  loved  to  see  a  boy  come  out 
of  college  with  a  desire  to  know  something. 

139 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

"Now  that  boy,"  said  he,  "is  really  interested 
in  what  is  going  on,  and  wants  to  know  why. 
It's  delightful.  He's  got  the  inquiring  mind, 
and,  you  see,  college  has  developed  it.  Per- 
haps it  would  have  developed  anyhow,  but  at 
least  the  environment  was  favorable.  It's  a 
mighty  inquisitive  mind  that  develops  on  gen- 
eral lines  if  it  is  put  hard  into  the  game  of 
money-grubbing  at  seventeen.  And  I  don't 
know  that  the  game  of  'society'  is  so  much 
better  for  girls,  though  it  is  better  in  this: 
that  its  more  strenuous  phase  doesn't  last 
long,  and  after  that  a  girl  who  has  not  yet 
formed  an  attachment  has  a  great  deal  more 
leisure  than  a  boy  who  is  tied  up  to  a  job. 
We  should  recognize  that  'society'  is  intended 
to  give  to  girls  that  acquaintance  with  people, 
and  the  opportunities  to  observe  them  and 
handle  them,  that  Jesup,  here,  values  so  much 
in  college.  Only  'society'  does  not  include  the 
systematic  cultivation  of  recorded  knowledge 
which  the  colleges  still  exact.  If  your  Maria, 
now,  Van  Pelt,  could  supplement  her  social 
experiments  with  such  fruits  of  college  learn- 
ing as  that  young  Tomlinson  reports,  she'd  be 
ahead  on  it.  Don't  you  think  so?  She'd  be 

140 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

a  more  interesting  woman,  and  have  a  livelier 
interest  in  life,  and  take  hold  of  things  more 
intelligently,  and  put  in  her  spare  time  to  better 
purpose,  and  have  more  fun.  It  is  a  great  thing, 
it  really  is  a  great  thing,  to  get  the  young 
started  up  the  tree  of  knowledge;  to  get  them 
to  want  to  know,  and  start  them  climbing." 

"I  agree  with  you,  Major,"  said  Mr.  Van 
Pelt.  "I  quite  agree  with  you.  But  Tomlin- 
son's  a  boy  and  Maria's  a  girl.  Is  that  going 
to  make  a  difference?  Evidently  Tomlinson's 
not  going  to  let  the  trees  obstruct  his  view  of 
the  forest.  He  seems  to  be  after  knowledge 
because  it  will  help  him  to  understand  life. 
That's  all  the  good  there  is  in  knowledge.  Now 
I  see  women  who  seem  to  claw  after  knowledge 
as  though  it  were  a  sunburst,  or  some  such  em- 
bellishment that  adorned  them  to  good  pur- 
pose. I  see  their  minds  caked  up  with  it,  so 
that  they  don't  work  well.  Some  of  the  learned 
ladies  are  tiresome,  just  as  some  of  the  learned 
men  are.  They  are  not  tiresome  because  they 
know  too  much,  but  because  they  lack  the  in- 
stinct that  should  tell  them  how  to  be  interest- 
ing. You  know  a  lively  retail  shop  with  a  good 
show-window  is  always  more  interesting  than 

141 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

a  storage  warehouse,  no  matter  what  treasures 
the  warehouse  may  contain.  I  was  saying  the 
other  day  that  Mrs.  Jameson,  the  professor's 
wife,  was  such  a  charming  lady,  and  a  very 
accomplished  woman  who  heard  me,  said,  'Oh 
yes;  but  she  doesn't  know  English  literature.' 
What  odds  whether  she  knows  English  litera- 
ture or  not  if  she  is  a  charming  lady?  As  much 
English  literature  as  will  make  her  lovelier  and 
better  able  to  express  herself  and  more  inter- 
esting and  wiser  is  a  good  thing,  and  more  than 
that  is  of  very  secondary  importance  except 
to  a  specialist.  But  that  other  lady  who  did 
know  English  literature  like  a  specialist  spoke 
of  Mrs.  Jameson's  defective  hold  on  it  very 
much  as  though  it  were  an  absent  sunburst  or 
an  unbecoming  gown.  As  for  Maria,  I  should 
hate  to  spoil  a  woman  to  make  a  scholar.  But 
on  the  other  hand,  I  should  hate  to  stunt  a 
woman  to  make  a  pretty  lady." 

The  Major  said  that  in  Maria's  case  he  would 
rather  take  the  first  chance  than  the  second. 
"But  if  you  will  encourage  Maria  to  come 
around  here  to  dinner,  Van  Pelt,"  he  said,  "I'll 
get  Jesup  to  catch  that  young  Tomlinson  per- 
son, and  we  will  examine  his  mind.  Perhaps 

142 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

Maria  may  be  interested  to  look  into  it,  and  if 
she  is,  I  should  love  to  see  her  try.  I  don't 
know  why,  but  when  I  hear  of  girls  who  are 
disposed  to  use  their  heads  to  think  with,  and 
who  think  it  would  be  nice  to  know  what's 
doing,  I  always  have  irresistible  impulses  to 
abet  them.  They  may  sometime — yes,  any 
time — think  out  and  disclose  such  interesting 
things.  For,  after  all,  women  are  women,  and 
we  men  all  grope  and  want  to  know  when  we 
speculate  about  them." 

He  got  up,  went  to  a  table  drawer,  and  got 
out  a  little  paper,  which  he  gave  me,  saying 
"Here's  a  tract  for  you,  Peregrine,"  and  then 
we  went  back  to  the  ladies. 

When  Cordelia  and  I  got  home  that  night, 
and  had  viewed,  approved,  and  tucked  in  our 
slumbering  son,  Samuel,  and  had  discussed  the 
company  and  their  discourse,  I  brought  out 
the  Major's  tract  and  read  it  to  her,  to  wit: 

"What  are  regarded  as  the  great  prizes  of 
life — fame,  money,  and  such  showy  things — are 
nearly  all  things  geared  to  the  powers  of  men. 
It  is  easy  to  measure  the  successes  of  men. 
They  stand  out  in  plain  sight  to  be  weighed 
and  examined. 

143 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

"But  the  successes  of  most  of  the  successful 
women  are  much  less  tangible.  As  a  rule  they 
are  contributions  to  life  as  it  passes — influence, 
care,  nurture,  direction,  companionship;  valu- 
ables of  the  highest  order,  but  which  finally 
appear,  not  as  properties  of  the  woman  from 
whom  they  proceeded,  but  of  the  men  or  the 
children  who  received  them,  and  the  families 
and  communities  that  they  have  blessed. 

"The  evidences  of  the  success  of  men  stand 
on  pedestals  and  hang  on  walls  and  are  recorded 
in  books  and  occupy  safe-deposit  boxes  in  bank 
vaults.  They  stretch  across  the  country  in 
the  form  of  steel  rails  or  copper  wires,  or  stand 
as  buildings  in  stone  and  steel.  On  every  one 
of  them  is  the  woman's  hand.  In  every  one 
of  them  she  has  had  her  share.  There  is  no 
success  of  any  kind,  no  power,  no  progress, 
which  is  not  half  hers.  But  ordinarily  she  does 
not  much  appear;  not,  at  least,  in  a  degree  at 
all  commensurate  with  her  importance.  Her 
work  is  not  expressed — not  much — in  things. 
It  is  made  flesh. 

"Is  that  unjust  to  her?  Is  it  unfair  that 
man  should  seem  to  outdo  her? 

"Who  shall  say  what  is  fair  and  what  not 

144 


WE  DINE  OUT  AND  DISCUSS  EDUCATION 

in  the  management  of  this  universe?  We 
flatter  ourselves  with  the  idea  that  the  Almighty 
has  chosen  to  express  Himself  in  mankind. 
Admitting  that,  it  is  a  daring  critic  who  will 
assert  that  woman  is  disparaged  because  it  is 
allotted  to  her  to  express  herself  in  like  fashion." 


VIII 

MY   PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

HOW  am  I  to  get  a  garden  for  Cordelia?  I 
love  so  to  see  her  in  a  garden.  They're 
fine  for  women.  I  like  them  myself,  but  the 
calls  of  the  industry  I  pursue  below  Canal 
Street  distract  me  from  floriculture  and  per- 
sonal pokings  in  the  earth.  I  don't  even  plan 
garden  in  any  detail,  which  is  partly,  of  course, 
because  we  have  no  actual  garden  possibilities 
yet  to  plan,  though  we  still  aspire  to  remote 
rhododendrons.  But  I  get  perceptible  refresh- 
ment out  of  flower-beds,  and  very  innocent  and 
healing  joys  in  the  colors  and  texture  and  de- 
signs of  flowers  and  the  various  patterns  of 
millinery  they  affect.  They  are  the  great 
natural  argument  for  art  and  beauty;  immense- 
ly consoling  and  inspiring  both  for  what  they 
are  and  for  what  they  intimate.  Admiring 
them,  even  the  imperfectly  Scriptural,  like  me, 
revert  instinctively  to  Scripture  and  to  con- 

146 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

sideration  of  the  lilies,  that  toil  not,  neither 
spin,  and  yet  are  in  the  front  of  the  competition 
for  looks,  and  fit  for  their  beauty's  sake  to  re- 
proach the  doubts  of  them  of  little  faith.  Cer- 
tainly the  Creator  did  not  get  up  flowers  for 
nothing. 

We  must  have  a  garden,  if  only  for  its  pious 
uses,  but  for  Cordelia  it  has  admirable  physical 
and  mental  uses  besides.  It  gives  her  all  the 
exercises — of  mind,  body,  and  spirit.  Detached 
as  she  is  from  the  soil  she  sprang  from,  in  her 
mother's  garden  she  gets  personally  back  to 
earth,  grubbing  in  it  with  trowels  and  like  im- 
plements, with  beads  on  her  brow  and  blisters 
and  mosquito  bites  wherever  they  happen  to 
come,  but  with  a  zest  and  an  enjoyment  that 
comes  near  to  passion.  Our  parents,  happily, 
have  pretty  good  gardens,  and  all  the  spring  we 
have  been  improving  the  week-ends  by  getting 
near  to  nature  on  the  paternal  suburban  reser- 
vations. This  being  Samuel's  first  spring,  he 
has  viewed  it  mostly  from  a  perambulator,  but, 
so  seen,  it  has  been  profitable  to  him,  and  he 
has  regarded  its  advances  with  perceptible  ap- 
proval, especially  when  it  has  been  warm 
enough,  and  dry  enough,  for  him  to  sleep  in- 

147 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

formally  out-of-doors.  No  doubt  the  modern 
theory  is  sound  that  it  is  never  too  cold  or  too 
wet  to  sleep  out-of-doors,  but  Samuel,  being 
naturally  robust,  has  never  had  to  be  absolutely 
modern  in  his  observances.  I  leave  it  to  any 
fair  person  if  it  is  tolerable  to  think  of  his  grow- 
ing up  without  close  and  long  association  with 
the  green-and-brown  earth?  Yet  children  do 
it  by  the  hundred  thousand  in  New  York,  and 
a  fair  proportion  of  them  grow  up  stronger  and 
better  than  a  considerable  proportion  of  the 
country-bred  children.  There  are  children,  I 
am  told,  whom  the  city  agrees  with,  and  others 
— a  minority — who  suffer  from  the  nervous  ten- 
sion of  it.  It  is  agreed,  I  suppose,  that  all 
children  are  better  off  out  of  town  in  summer, 
but  so  are  grown  people,  provided  they  go  to  a 
healthier  place  and  can  find  fit  employments, 
or  make  them  for  themselves.  But  the  hardy 
children,  like  the  hardy  grown-ups,  seem  to  get 
along  in  town  or  out.  I  find  that  in  June  the 
country  air  begins  to  taste  different  from  the 
town  air,  and  when  I  get  off  the  cars  in  the 
rural  districts  I  fill  my  lungs  with  great  gulps 
of  it,  to  the  easement  of  my  feelings. 

Bless  me,  how  much  we  want,  and  how  much 

148 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

it  seems  to  cost  to  get  it!  Everybody  wants  a 
lot  nowadays,  and  everybody,  except  the  seri- 
ously opulent,  seems  to  find  the  cost  excessive. 
I  suppose  everybody  wants  for  his  child  what 
Cordelia  and  I  want  for  Samuel.  Everybody 
seems  to  want  to  live  some  sort  of  a  life  that's 
worth  living,  and  to  get  the  price  of  it  some- 
how. It  is  a  large  contract  for  society  to  meet 
these  natural  and  reasonable  desires;  no  wonder 
the  world's  machinery  groans  so,  and  that 
strikes  and  perplexities  and  trust  trials  so  much 
abound,  and  that  so  much  talk  is  in  the  air 
about  the  right  of  the  people  to  rule.  But  rul- 
ing is  a  skilled  job,  and  though  it  is  none  too 
well  done,  and  never  has  been,  the  notion  that 
"the  people"  are  first-class  experts  at  it  who 
are  kept  out  of  power  by  interlopers  seems  to 
me  more  or  less  humorous.  And  so  is  the  notion 
that  we  "people"  have  any  great  eagerness  to 
rule.  We  haven't.  That's  one  trouble.  Al- 
most all  of  us  want  to  go  about  our  business  and 
procure  some  of  the  ameliorations  of  existence. 
Ruling  is  hard  work  and  small  pay.  We  want 
some  one  else  to  do  it,  if  possible;  some  one 
who  has  a  call  and  feels  that  he  has  a  talent 
for  government.  These  gentlemen  who  talk 

149 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

about  the  people  ruling  are  usually  gentlemen 
who  have  inward  admonitions  that  they  possess 
governmental  talent.  We  choose  between  them, 
and  to  that  extent  we  rule,  and  have  been  ruling 
for  some  time,  and  will  rule,  I  guess,  for  some 
time  to  come. 

Cordelia  and  I  would  like  to  vote  for  more 
room  in  our  flat.  It's  too  tight.  Now,  with 
Samuel  and  his  belongings  to  provide  for,  we 
haven't  room  to  hang  up  and  put  away  our 
things.  We  want  a  larger  apartment,  cheaper 
food,  especially  milk,  reduction  in  the  price  of 
clothes,  lower  servants'  wages — more,  gener- 
ally, for  our  money.  But  I  don't  know  just 
how  to  vote  for  these  things  without  running 
up  against  the  reasonable  needs  of  other  people. 
All  the  measures  I  would  favor  as  suitable  to 
make  my  earnings  go  further  seem  constituted 
to  make  somebody  else's  earnings  less.  That 
wouldn't  hinder  me  from  voting  to  reduce  the 
tariff,  because  I  think  it  ought  to  be  reduced, 
but  I  don't  want  to  vote  any  less  wages  for 
Matilda  Finn.  Demand  and  taxation  fix  rents; 
how  am  I  going  to  vote  them  cheaper?  If  the 
Meat  Trust  makes  meat  unduly  dear,  I'm  against 
it;  but  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  it  does.  If  the 

150 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

excessive  multiplication  of  grocers  makes  pota- 
toes high,  it  is  a  pity,  but  how  am  I  going  to 
vote  against  it?  I  can  vote,  when  the  chance 
comes,  for  the  best  city  government  that  is 
offered,  and  the  best  obtainable  bargain  about 
public  utilities,  and  supervision  of  milk,  and 
such  things;  and  I  can  vote  for  tariff  reform, 
and  trust  regulation,  and  conservation  in  so 
far  as  those  desirables  are  affected  by  retaining 
or  dismissing  the  present  administrators  of  the 
Federal  government;  but  after  I  have  voted 
all  I  can — and  expressed  my  primary  prefer- 
ence, and  initiated  and  recalled  and  referended, 
if  those  privileges  are  offered  me — it  will  still 
remain  undoubtedly  that  if  I  want  more  closet- 
room  for  Cordelia  and  a  continuing  residence 
in  town  and  a  garden  somewhere,  I've  got  to 
get  in  more  money.  So  I'm  in  just  the  same 
case  as  the  mill-hands  and  the  miners  and 
everybody  else  who  has  been  on  a  strike  lately, 
except  that  I  haven't  got  to  strike  unless  I 
want  to,  and  I  sha'n't  want  to  until  I  have 
an  offer  of  something  better  than  I've  got  now. 
It  makes  me  ashamed  to  keep  wanting  more 
money,  even  though  the  mill-hands  and  miners 
and  the  rest  feel  just  as  I  do  about  it.  But, 

11  151 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

after  all,  that  want  is  the  great  spur  of  civiliza- 
tion. If  most  of  us  didn't  want  more  closet- 
room,  and  a  garden,  and  a  roof -garden  sleeping- 
apartment  for  Samuel,  and  a  little  larger 
dinner-parties  than  we  can  give  as  it  is  and 
more  of  them,  and  food,  clothes,  education, 
leisure,  travel,  automobiles,  and  all  the  other 
necessaries  and  unnecessaries,  I  suppose  all 
progress  would  slacken.  The  whole  apparatus 
of  civilization  seems  to  be  geared  to  these  more 
or  less  humble  human  desires.  Politics  is  a 
sort  of  rash  that  breaks  out  on  bodies  of  men 
that  are  tired  with  too  much  work,  or  hungry, 
or  starved  in  their  spirits,  or  thwarted  in  their 
aspirations,  or  who  need  more  closet-room  and 
gardens.  The  politicians  are  not  rulers,  after 
all;  they  are  doctors,  making  diagnoses,  and 
offering  prescriptions  and  treatments,  and  tak- 
ing fees,  and  flunked  a  good  deal  of  the  time 
by  the  symptoms  of  the  patient.  A  real  cure 
of  human  ailments  by  politics  is  inconceivable. 
There  are  too  many  people,  and  they  want  more 
than  there  is,  and  if  they  were  all  satisfied  for 
once  at  a  quarter  past  six,  there  would  be  a  lot 
more  of  them,  and  they  would  have  developed 
a  lot  more  wants,  by  seven  o'clock.  But  that 

152 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

only  proves  that  politics  is  a  continuing  job, 
that  never  will  lapse,  and  never  will  be  finished 
so  long  as  there  are  folks  on  the  earth. 

It  is  wonderful  what  is  accomplished;  how 
we  endure  labor,  privations,  disappointment, 
restricted  closet-space,  and  lack  of  gardens,  and 
go  on  comparatively  orderly  and  patient,  get- 
ting what  we  can  and  going  without  the  rest. 
Shops  are  full  of  goods  and  the  doors  open; 
trains  run,  crowds  surge  here  and  there,  strikers 
strike  and  pickets  picket,  judges  sit,  juries  find, 
the  polls  open  and  close,  and  the  papers  tell  us 
who  was  elected.  Somehow,  in  all  this  muddle, 
life  is  fairly  safe,  most  of  the  people  are  fed, 
babies  get  attention,  the  dead  are  buried,  the 
processes  of  existence  go  on. 

The  whole  of  politics  seems  secondary  be- 
cause the  whole  material  side  of  life,  even  gar- 
dens and  closet-room,  seems  secondary.  I  guess 
that  is  what  saves  the  world  alive.  There  are 
not  enough  material  things  to  satisfy  everybody. 
I  doubt  indeed  if  there  are  enough  to  satisfy 
anybody.  But  of  the  things  of  the  mind  and 
of  the  things  of  the  spirit  there  is  a  boundless 
supply,  and  any  one  who  can  may  help  himself. 

We  scramble  for  things  as  though  they  were 

153 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

all  there  was,  and  yet  the  main  joys  of  life  are 
in  ideas — in  religion,  in  love,  in  beauty,  in  duty, 
in  truth — things  that  no  trust  can  monopolize, 
and  which  come  tariff-free  through  any  port. 
They  are  the  realities,  and  these  bodily  things 
are  mostly  shadows,  indispensable,  to  be  sure 
— things  that  it  is  a  reproach  and  a  high  in- 
convenience to  be  without,  but  which  take  care 
of  themselves  so  long  as  the  realities  prosper. 

Well,  I  have  got  a  boost.  Major  Brace  has 
suggested  to  me  that  I  move  my  tools  over  to 
his  office  this  fall  and  become  a  partner  in  his 
firm.  The  suggestion  is  agreeable  to  me,  and 
I  have  closed  with  it.  His  firm  is  undergoing 
reorganization.  At  present  it  is  Brace  &  Ket- 
cham,  but  Mr.  Ketcham's  wife  has  fallen  into 
so  much  money  that,  having  also  some  savings 
of  his  own,  he  feels  the  need  of  foreign  travel, 
country  air,  and  like  delights,  and  proposes  to 
retire  from  active  practice  and  concern  himself 
with  self-improvement,  cows,  and  public  or 
quasi-public  duties,  like  being  a  director  in 
banks  and  corporations,  serving  on  committees, 
or  even  running  for  public  office.  There  seems 
to  be  a  great  deal  for  competent  and  experienced 

154 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

citizens  to  do  whenever  they  have  acquired  the 
means  of  support  and  can  afford  to  take  nominal 
pay,  or  none,  for  their  services.  The  new  firm 
is  to  be  Brace,  Witherspoon  &  Jesup;  which  last 
is  me.  It  will  be  a  strong  firm.  The  Major  has 
experience  and  connections;  Mr.  Witherspoon 
has  knowledge,  especially  of  law,  and  appalling 
diligence;  and  I  have  a  living  to  make  for  Cor- 
delia and  Samuel  and  myself,  and  everything 
to  buy,  including  a  city  mansion,  a  country 
residence,  some  automobiles,  and  a  garden  with 
rhododendrons  in  it.  When  I  think  how  modest 
my  proportion  of  the  firm's  winnings  is  to  be, 
and  how  much  it  is  to  buy,  my  arithmetical 
talents  are  strained  to  compute  the  princely 
affluence  that  must  be  coming  out  of  the  new 
firm  to  the  Major. 

Anyhow,  my  circumstances  will  be  eased 
enough  for  us  to  move  into  a  more  commodious 
flat  next  fall,  which  is  important.  The  modi- 
fication in  my  prospects  pleases  me  very  much. 
I  am  attached  to  the  Major.  He  is  good  to 
be  with.  I  feel  confident  that  he  will  make  a 
living,  and  either  make  it  honestly  or  make  it 
look  so  honest  to  me  that  my  self-esteem  will 
not  be  wounded  by  a  lot  of  compunctions.  I 

155 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

think  so  because  I  believe  he  is  at  least  as 
scrupulous  as  I  am,  and  has  more  experience 
in  adjusting  his  scruples  to  the  facts  of  life. 
And  that  is  a  mighty  delicate  matter.  If  you 
can't  do  it  you  get  nowhere,  and  if  you  overdo 
it  you  get  eventually,  I  presume,  to  that  ideality 
that  we  call  "hell."  I  don't  know  that  I  should 
necessarily  mind  that,  for  it  is  possible  that 
the  attractions  of  hell  may  have  been  under- 
rated; but  I  hate  consumedly  the  processes  of 
getting  there  as  I  see  them.  The  by-path  by 
drink  is  so  far  out  of  my  line  that  I  don't  have 
to  take  serious  thought  about  it;  nor  yet  about 
the  propensity  to  divagations  in  feminine  com- 
panionship, which  makes  some  persons  so  much 
trouble;  but  I  believe  I  may  say  without  affec- 
tation that  I  would  hate  the  detachment  from 
that  ideality  which  we  call  "truth."  Surely 
the  greatest  possible  luxury  in  life  is  to  think 
you  are  on  the  right  side;  to  know  the  truth  and 
follow  it,  or  at  least,  since  we  are  all  so  fallible, 
to  think  you  know  it  and  are  on  its  trail.  To 
think  that  I  was  going  to  practise  law  merely 
as  the  agent  of  the  astute,  filching  unwarranted 
profits  from  the  simple,  would  be  quite  intoler- 
able, of  course.  It  would  be  so  at  least  as  long 

156 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

as  I  continued  to  be  any  good,  for  I  should 
think  of  it  as  a  progress  to  "hell";  and  when  it 
ceased  to  bother  me,  that  would  be  the  sign 
that  I  had  arrived.  That's  the  kind  of  hell  the 
idea  of  which  is  repellent — the  hell  in  which 
the  damned  are  fat  and  hard  and  solvent,  and 
relentlessly  and  eternally  gainful  for  themselves. 
Ugh !  They  make  me  sick;  at  least  the  thought 
of  them  does.  When  you  come  to  look  for 
them  in  the  flesh,  of  course  they  have  their 
human  modifications  and  are  often  lean,  jo- 
cund, and  charming. 

The  Major  says  there's  a  new  morality  grow- 
ing up  that  will  express  itself  presently  in  some 
new  commandments,  or  a  new  interpretation 
of  the  sixth.  Stealing,  as  heretofore  under- 
stood, has  been  limited,  he  says,  to  taking  from 
some  one  something  that  was  his.  But  there 
is  a  growing  sentiment  that  it  applies  also  to 
hogging  an  unconscionable  amount  of  things 
desirable  for  the  mass  of  folks,  but  to  which 
none  of  them  had  established  legal  ownership. 
As  "the  people"  grow  stronger  and  more  in- 
telligent there  is  more  interest  in  having  them 
get  what  should  be  coming  to  them.  So  the 
Major  looks  for  the  evolution  of  a  command- 

157 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

ment  to  the  general  effect  of  "Thou  shalt  not 
take  more  than  thy  share,"  and  for  lots  of  legis- 
tation  based  on  it.  And  since  what  anybody's 
share  is  depends  on  all  manner  of  circumstances, 
and  is  highly  debatable,  and  is  sure  to  get  into 
court  again  and  again,  he  looks  for  busy — and 
profitable — times  for  our  profession. 

Meanwhile  the  bulk  of  the  law  business  is 
not  a  wrangle  between  the  wolf  and  the  lamb, 
with  all  the  best  talent  retained  for  the  wolf. 
A  good  deal  of  it  is  wrangles  between  wolves, 
wherein  it  is  just  as  virtuous  to  be  on  one  side 
as  the  other;  and  a  lot  more  of  it  is  not  wrangle 
at  all,  but  a  tame  exercise  of  the  lawyer's  true 
profession  of  keeping  order  in  the  world. 

All  the  same,  it  must  be  embarrassing  to  any 
lawyer's  ethical  self-esteem  always  to  be  the 
defender,  at  a  high  price,  of  the  strong.  It 
can't  be  easy  to  avoid  it,  once  a  man  gets  a 
considerable  reputation;  but  I  guess  it  does 
pinch.  Politically,  of  course,  it  is  very  ex- 
pensive, and  that,  without  much  regard  for 
the  truth  that  when  Strength  is  right,  even 
though  it  is  incorporated,  it  is  just  as  important 
to  society  that  it  should  get  its  dues  under  the 
law  as  though  it  were  somebody  else.  The  risks 

158 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

of  an  employment  are  one  of  the  considerations 
on  which  its  rate  of  payment  is  based,  and  in 
this  legal  employment  to  which  I  seem  com- 
mitted, the  risk  of  discredit  may  well  be  one 
basis  for  extra  large  fees.  Disreputability  is 
bound  to  rub  off  of  clients  on  their  lawyers, 
provided  there  is  enough  of  it,  and  the  associa- 
tion is  long  enough  continued,  and  highly  enough 
paid,  or  insufficiently  varied  by  professional 
associations  of  another  sort. 

I  should  not  like  to  be  committed  bodily  to 
the  side  of  the  Haves  in  my  legal  experiences, 
and  I  know  I  never  shall  be  so  long  as  I  am  in 
the  same  firm  with  the  Major.  Neither  do  I 
want  to  tie  up  to  impossible  enthusiasms  and 
altruisms;  and  to  plans  that  won't  work,  and 
to  fabulous  expectations  of  making  the  earth 
equally  comfortable  for  all  its  residents  irre- 
spective of  their  powers  and  qualities.  The 
Major  does  not  go  in  for  those  phantoms.  He 
will  not  always  be  right,  but  he  will  never  be 
systematically  impossible. 

I  guess  Witherspoon  is  going  to  get  rich.  He 
is  terribly  smart;  so  smart,  and  so  nearly  sound- 
minded,  and  so  nearly  drink-proof,  that,  with 
the  start  he  has,  it  will  be  virtually  impossible 

159 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

for  him  to  stay  poor.  If  not  myself,  I  would 
rather  be  Witherspoon  than  any  one  I  see  about. 
I  could  not  afford  to  be  the  Major;  he  is  too  old. 
I  have  too  much  to  do,  and  too  much  expecta- 
tion of  liking  to  do  it,  to  wish  to  be  he,  much 
as  I  like  him.  Witherspoon  is  older  than  I  am, 
older  by  nine  or  ten  years,  I  guess,  but  I  could 
almost  afford  that  advancement  in  years  for 
what  I  might  gain  in  ability  by  having  his  head 
instead  of  mine.  Not,  of  course,  that  I  would 
be  he,  unless  it  was  compulsory  that  I  should 
be  some  one  other  than  I  am.  A  property  that 
one  has  taken  so  much  pains  to  improve  as  me 
becomes  dear  to  the  owner.  I  rate  among 
improvements  Cordelia  and  Samuel  (though 
you  may  call  them  liabilities  if  you  like),  all 
that  I  know,  my  acquaintance,  my  reputation, 
the  repairs  done  on  my  teeth  (which  were  quite 
expensive),  advertisement  as  so  far  acquired 
(except  as  already  mentioned  under  acquaint- 
ance and  reputation),  a  little  life  insurance  paid 
up  to  date,  and  there  must  be  a  lot  of  other 
improvements  I  can't  think  of.  To  offset  all 
that,  I  have  expensive  habits  (like  Cordelia  and 
Samuel)  and  the  probability  of  others.  I  smoke 
and  drink,  though  inexpensively  as  yet,  and  like 

160 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

better  food  and  rather  better  clothes  than  I  am 
entitled  to. 

One  thing  that  I  admire  about  Witherspoon 
is  his  clothes;  they  are  so  bad — or  rather  he 
is  so  oblivious  to  them.  I  guess  they  are  pretty 
good  clothes,  but  he  is  apt  to  wear  them  like 
a  man  in  the  woods;  I  see  him  sometimes  going 
about  in  this  polite  community  in  rough-look- 
ing, unshiny,  russet  shoes,  a  flannel  shirt  with  a 
soft  collar,  his  trousers  turned  up,  not  precisely 
but  casually;  and  if  he  has  on  black  shoes,  like 
as  not  they  are  not  polished.  That  is  liable  to 
be  his  working  dress.  He  does  better  at  times; 
does  better  doubtless  if  he  happens  to  think 
of  it  or  his  wife  tells  him,  and  he  togs  himself 
out  properly  when  he  goes  out  to  dinner;  but 
his  mind  is  not  on  raiment,  nor  much  on  de- 
tails of  living,  anyhow.  Presently,  I  suppose, 
his  wife  will  say  he  must  have  a  valet,  and  his 
clothes  will  be  pressed  and  laid  out  for  him  for 
the  rest  of  time,  and  he  will  put  them  on  and 
always  go  forth  shining.  But  he's  fine  as  he  is. 

It  is  grand  to  be  enough  of  a  man  to  be  worth 
a  servant  to  do  all  one's  chores.  It  is  also 
grand  meanwhile  to  be  able  to  dress  as  inatten- 
tively as  Witherspoon  does.  If  he  were  lazy 

161 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

he  couldn't  do  it,  nor  yet  if  he  had  not  on  him 
so  many  of  the  marks  of  a  first-class  man.  If 
he  were  just  ordinary,  you'd  be  displeased  with 
him  for  not  being  clean-shaven,  but  when  he 
smiles  and  begins  to  talk  you  don't  care  whether 
he  shaved  yesterday  or  the  day  before,  nor 
whether  his  shoes  are  blacked,  nor  what  kind 
of  a  collar  he  has  on. 

I'm  not  that  way  at  all.  I  have  to  wear 
respectable  clothes,  brush  my  hair  and  teeth, 
shave  every  morning,  black  my  shoes,  and  pay 
attention  to  millinery.  I  succeed  in  all  these 
details,  and  would  make,  I  suppose,  an  accept- 
able body-servant  for  a  really  great  man,  or  a 
fairly  good  housemaid,  if  it  were  not  that  I  am 
able,  under  Providence,  to  put  the  remnant  of  my 
time  after  attending  to  my  own  details  to  more 
profitable  use  than  doing  ordinary  details  for 
some  one  else.  Details  I  shall  do,  no  doubt,  for 
some  time  to  come  if  not  forever,  but  they  will 
be  fairly  remunerative  details,  I  hope,  requir- 
ing judgment  and  knowledge. 

It's  all  service,  and  all  that  matters  much  to 
the  moralist  is  that  each  of  us  should  come, 
somehow,  where  he  belongs,  and  get  the  sort 
of  job  he  can  learn  to  be  good  at,  and  delve  at 

162 


MY  PROSPECTS  IMPROVE 

it  until  a  better  one  calls  him — if  it  does.  But 
of  course  to  find  one's  proper  job  is  a  great 
achievement  in  life,  being  the  one  that  engages 
my  energies  at  present.  Also  to  find  a  man 
proper  for  a  job  that  needs  doing  seems  to  be 
a  considerable  achievement,  bigger  or  less  big, 
according  to  the  size  of  the  job,  but  supremely 
important  when  the  job  is  a  vital  matter  like 
the  Presidency  sometimes,  or  the  discovery  of 
an  effectual  general  in  war,  or  a  revolutionary 
leader.  The  processes  by  which  the  top  men 
come  to  the  top  are  as  interesting  as  anything 
in  history.  Indeed,  they  almost  constitute 
history.  Usually  they  are  processes  of  trying 
out,  and  it  seems  that  the  qualifications  for  a 
great  place  must  include,  as  a  rule,  the  ability 
to  get  the  place,  and,  if  it  is  political,  to  get  it 
away  from  somebody  else.  But  the  unpolitical 
places  don't  seem  so  much  to  be  wrested  from 
anybody.  The  most  powerful  men  just  come 
to  their  own.  Commonly  they  make  the  places 
which  they  occupy,  and  the  places  grow  with 
them,  until,  when  they  get  out,  there  is  a  gap- 
ing vacancy  to  be  filled. 

That  is  not  the  sort  of  place  for  which  the 
Major  has  selected  me.    Not  yet.    It's  just  a 

163 


REFLECTIONS  OF  A  BEGINNING  HUSBAND 

chance  to  do  some  work  as  it  comes  along,  and 
make  a  place,  possibly,  which  can  be  recognized 
as  definite,  commodious,  and  profitable  because 
of  some  scarcity  of  the  qualities  required  to  fill 
it.  I  have  great  confidence  in  the  Major,  and 
feel  strongly  that  his  judgment  in  choosing 
persons  and  foreseeing  labors  for  them  is  excel- 
lent, and  I  have  faith  in  particular,  as  I  have 
intimated,  in  his  sagacity  hi  selecting  Wither- 
spoon.  So  I  am  a  good  deal  pleased  that  he 
should  have  invited  me. 


THE   END 


jsko     b. 
"1720  aet 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  I 


